


Fact or Fiction

by talkfast



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Realities, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Angel Dean Winchester, Blind Dean, F/M, False Memories, Fluff and Angst, Human Castiel, M/M, heres how it works, if you like aus this is the right fic for a-you, mind the content warnings, okay honestly this is ridiculous to tag, there are multiple aus which are part of the same overarching story, which serves as a framing device
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 06:18:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5857360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkfast/pseuds/talkfast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Think of it as a game," Gabriel tells him. "Once you win, you'll be rewarded with your freedom and the memories we took from you. Each round is another life, complete with memories. The aim of the game is to work out which one is real."</i><br/><br/>Dean experiences life as many different incarnations of himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fact or Fiction

**Author's Note:**

> heres what you need to know, dear reader:  
> \- this is basically a bunch of stories tied haphazardly together  
> \- each of the alternate universes has a title  
> \- you can find a 'list of contents' in the end notes  
> \- you can skip over most of the aus without missing out on important plot! neat  
> \- some of them are pretty dark. check out a detailed list of content warnings at the end of the fic  
> \- if youre here for fluff, skip over the sections titled 'nightmares'!  
> \- i apologise for my late night editing skills but not my astounding creative genius

* * *

**BREAKFAST**

His name is Dean Winchester.

He wakes up with hands pushing at his shoulder. A glance at the alarm clock beside the bed tells him that it’s 5:30 AM. He’s a firm believer that the day doesn’t start ‘til the sun rises, so he presses his face into the pillow and speaks in the indecipherable language of people still at the edge of sleep.

“You gotta get up now, Dean. It’s an hour’s drive and we have to stop for gas.”

That’s his brother, Sam Winchester, four years younger and the most important person in his life. Dean remembers teaching him what words meant, tucking him in and feeding him while their dad was away. Sometimes he thinks that he raised him. 

“And breakfast,” he says with half-opened eyes.

“Rule number one of hunting. Never on an empty stomach.” Sam grins at him and pats his shoulder before moving away from the bed. “If you hurry we can go to the diner and get something good. If you don’t, it’s Big Macs and bad coffee.”

Dean sits up quickly and puts his feet on the floor, murmuring something about pancakes. Sam tries not to laugh and tosses him a shirt. It’s comfortable, just the two of them, on the road and doing what they can. Staying in low-cost low-quality motel rooms with just enough cash at hand to keep them from sharing a bed.

When he comes out of the shower Sam has a bag packed up and slung over his shoulder. There’s a temporary sigil on the back of the door, which Dean checks on their way out. The lock clicks. He tries the handle again just to be sure. Then he and Sam are going down the wooden steps to the parking lot, trying and failing to be considerate of the people still asleep in their rooms.

“Looks like there’s going to be a storm,” Sam says, looking up at the overcast sky.

“Think there’s anything weird about it?”

“Nah.” Sam dumps the bag on the ground, next to a white Subaru. “Dean, where are you going?”

“What? Come on, Sammy. You want to steal a car when we’ve got the...”

He trails off when he realises that the Subaru is theirs, bought a couple years ago with the money Dad left in the storage space. It was easier having their own car than joyriding or borrowing Bobby’s rusted trucks. They’d chosen the Subaru because it was cheap and reliable, even if it wasn’t fast enough sometimes to get them safely away from what they were hunting or cool enough for Dean to put much time into it. It’s dusty and has little dents where rocks have kicked up.

“Are you feeling okay, man?”

“Yeah. Yeah, uh, guess I’ve got to get some food in me.” Dean tries for a smile and puts the keys into the car door, pressing the button to open the boot for Sam. He remembers doing this before, hundreds of times. It’s something he shouldn’t even think about. But it feels strange. The car is too small, the window presses against his arm and he can’t settle his feet comfortably. The mirror’s lined up wrong, the ceiling’s too high and his chair’s firm like it hasn’t been broken in yet.

Sam gets in on the passenger side and waits for him to start up the car. “Seriously, you okay dude?”

“This is...” He tries and fails to explain it, this feeling of wrongness, like he shouldn’t be here, this car isn’t his and he shouldn’t be sitting in it, about to go on an hour-long trip with Sam driving this weird somehow unfamiliar thing, it’s an automatic and that’s wrong, wrong, where does he put his hands...

“Dean?” Sam shakes his head. “Look, we’ll just get the food to go, okay? I know you don’t like going up against witches, so we’ll just get it over with if it’s bothering you this much-”

“I let you eat in the car?” Dean says disbelievingly, even though he remembers all the times they’ve sat in here and gotten their hands messy, staining the upholstery and not giving a shit about it.

“Yeah, Dean, you let me eat in the car. It was Dad’s money and we bought it together. We only have, like, three rules for it. Pick each other up if we call, driver’s choice of music, and don’t break what you can’t pay for. If you want to decide you care about it now, whatever, but...”

His words stop meaning anything. Dean’s minds pulls away from his body, so he feels like he’s watching someone else sit here with his brother in a too-small car they don’t care about enough to fight over, with a stormy sky outside and raindrops breaking on the glass.

“This isn’t right,” he says quietly, before he even thinks about voicing the words.

Sam looks taken aback before he disappears, swirling into smoke, along with the car and everything else, dissipating into black nothingness.

There’s a face very close to his and it smiles before it speaks.

“That was only a practice round, I hope you understand. We’re not going to make this easy.”

“Wha-” Dean says breathlessly.

“You did the wrong thing, Dean-o. Wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time, but I won’t give you any hints about it, just let me tell you that if you want to get out of here you have to play along.”

“You’re the trickster!” he accuses and struggles against the nothing that’s holding him.

The face draws away and he can see that they’re both surrounded by blackness, like they’re in space, with shining lights of differing sizes reaching out in every direction. “Gabriel. The archangel in charge of keeping you here.”

“What the fuck are you-”

“You’re not listening to me, Dean.”

“I-” he starts to speak and then falls silent.

Gabriel smiles widely at him and claps his hands together. “Good, thank you, now we can get on with it. As I’ve already told you, Dean, you’re being kept here by a heavenly authority. I’d like to say this was for fun, but it’s work. Got to do what the people upstairs tell you. I don’t want to end up where you are, or worse. Because it really could be worse for you, Dean. This is what you’ve got and you’re just going to have to get that through your delightfully human mind.”

“Why are-”

“Why?” His smile is edged with angelic wrath. “Why did you do what you did to deserve it? I’m on the clock here, Dean. This is holy Father-approved, not me trying you and Sammy out with a few illusions and a trickster act. This is the real deal. Heaven ordered, tailor-made and just for you.”

“I’ve been through this before. The angels are handing out their own orders because they don’t know where God is-”

“I’m an archangel. I get ’em direct.”

“Look, I don’t know where the hell we are, but Sam’ll come for me-”

“Sam?” Gabriel’s voice is high in mock delight. “Oh, Sammy! It’s been so long. I hope he does come, then we can catch up! So much to talk about. Apocalypse, fratricide, the whole demon blood thing-”

“You’re a part of the angelic chorus, aren’t you. Cas’ll-”

“I’m going to stop you right there.” Gabriel puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Cas’ll find you, Cas’ll save you, Cas’ll kick my butt three ways to Thursday. Defection aside, I know my little brother. Not only can he not save you from this, but when he finds out what it is, he _won’t._ ” When Dean doesn’t say anything, he gives his shoulder a reassuring pat. “It’s cute you have so much faith in him, though. If it wouldn’t land me a century of paperwork, I might ease up on you for that.”

“So what’s this about?”

“Good question. Tell me, how much do you remember?”

“What?”

“You know. From before this.” Gabriel waves a hand dismissively at the black space and lights.

“I woke up and Sam was convinced we owned a Subaru.”

Gabriel knocked his forehead lightly with the backs of two fingers. “That wasn’t real, we both know that. What else do you remember?”

It should be an easy question. In his head he has an understanding of himself, which says that he is Dean, an adult, an American, who speaks English and has lived a life before he was talking to an archangel about things he doesn’t really understand yet. He has a brother called Sam and Cas. When he was in the false reality he had memories that filled the empty space. There’s nothing there now, nothing he believes.

“Yeah. That’s the angel mojo you keep talking about. You’re wiped clean, Dean-o. Time for a fresh start.” Gabriel steps back and looks around them. “Or a thousand.”

“You...”

“I’m going to let you in on a secret about heaven. Everything can be reversed, except for time. And you’re here to do it. Time.” He laughs but stops abruptly. “Well, I thought it was funny. I guess you’re not in on the joke yet.”

“What is-”

“There are conditions to you being here, and there are conditions to you getting out. Think of it as a game. Once you win, you’ll be rewarded with your freedom and the memories we took from you. Here’s your motivation, aside from the obvious: I can reverse what’s been done to your mind, but I can’t reverse time. The clock will keep ticking all the while you’re in here. When you get out, you’ll be the same Dean who came in. Just a little more penitent, if I’ve done my job right. But time will have passed. Maybe a month. Maybe a millennium. It’s the difference between the diner for breakfast and McDonald’s. Or, to put it in a way you’ll understand: it’s the difference between seeing Sammy again or reuniting with a gravestone.”

Dean fights with his restraints, though there aren’t any there. “How the fuck can you-”

“It’s my job,” Gabriel says easily.

“I don’t-”

“What you just experienced was a practice round, like I told you. It’d be great if you listened but hey, I won’t complain.” He gestures at the lights. “Each one of these is another round. Another life, complete with memories. The aim of the game is to work out which one is real. Good luck. And for Sam’s sake, you’d better work quickly.” Gabriel grins at him and walks off, disappearing into the blackness.

It is completely silent. The lights sway slightly, twinkling like stars.

Huffing out a frustrated breath, Dean goes to one of them and takes it in his hands, the white light brightening until he can’t see any black.

* * *

**BREAKFAST II**

He’s laid out along the back seat of the Impala, arms folded on his chest and leather jacket bundled up underneath his head as a makeshift pillow. There’s a sharp knock on the glass and he opens his eyes, staring up first at the roof of the car and then at Lisa’s apologetic face. Dean blinks, then gets up quickly to open the door and hug his girlfriend, who’s warm against him in the cold morning air.

“I’m so sorry, Dean, I just, I’m sorry.” The words spill out of her and he smiles into her hair.

“No, baby, it’s okay.” He rubs her back and thinks how stupid it is that he missed her.

Lisa looks up at him. “I made you sleep in the car.”

“It’s the Impala. She’s way more comfortable than the couch.”

She makes that face he’s seen a thousand times, like she doesn’t agree with him but knows better than to disagree. “Not as comfortable as the bed, though.”

“Not as good as a bed with you in it,” he compromises and they share a soft kiss. “Does this mean we’re not fighting anymore?”

“Geez, Dean! It meant we weren’t fighting for as long as I felt bad about overreacting. Now, yeah, we’re back to fighting again.” Lisa takes a step back and breaks the silence when it’s clear he’s not going to speak. “I can’t believe you did that to Sam.”

“What? You’re my girlfriend, you should be on my side-”

“I’ll be on your side when you’re right, but you’re wrong about this. He’s twenty-two years old! You have to let him make his own decisions-”

“If he wanted me to let him make his own decisions, he wouldn’t ask me what I thought about it.”

Lisa stares at him for a minute, her hand on her hip. “You know who you sound like right now?”

He runs his hand over his face and regrets getting out of his warm, comfortable car. “No, Lisa, who do I sound like right now.”

“Your dad. I know you don’t want to hear it-”

“I really don’t want to hear this, Lis,” Dean says as he shuts the car door.

“-but this is just like John. He was always stopping you from doing what you really wanted. I know he’s gone now and I’m sad about that too, but Dean, for God’s sake! Just think about what it was like for you! Sam didn’t ask you about it so that you could make the decision for him. He asked you because he wants your approval.”

He throws his hands up in frustration. “Then he would just say that!” 

“Look, I know Sam’s your little brother and it’s great that you’re so close. Really. But he’s an adult now. You can’t treat him like he’s a kid forever-”

“Treating him like a kid doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop him going to law school, Lis. He can do that if he wants.”

Lisa frowns at him. “You told him that education was ‘paying thousands for a piece of paper’ and that by the time he graduated he’d be too physically weak to help you at the garage anymore.”

“I didn’t say that,” Dean says uncertainly.

“You absolutely said that.”

Well, that explains why Sam had looked hurt and Lisa had thrown him out of the house as soon as he’d driven off down the road.

She touches his cheek and tells him in a soft voice, “I know that you love him, and I know you love me-” 

He gets in a quick kiss before she finishes her sentence.

“-but I worry about you two. The only reason our relationship has come this far is because we talk.” Lisa runs her hands up and down his arms. “About what we’re feeling and what we’re doing...you and Sam just let these misunderstandings go. He doesn’t know that you didn’t mean what you said-”

“I think he does, Lisa.” It’s Dean’s turn to step back.

“You didn’t see the look on his face last night-”

“I’ve known Sam a hell of a lot longer than you.”

“I’m not trying to say that. I just-”

He shakes off her hands when she tries to touch him again. “No, I get it. I’ll be away from the house for a while, okay?”

Her face lights up in a hopeful smile. “Are you going to see Sam?”

Instead of answering, Dean kisses her on the cheek before he walks around to the driver’s seat. “I’ll be back tonight.”

“Okay, honey.”

The engine starts up with a familiar rumble and he watches her smile and wave at him in the rear-view mirror as he drives away. When Dean turns the corner he pulls up and sits there for a few minutes, trying to work out how his girlfriend, who he loves, remembers loving for a long time, can be so understanding and yet understand so little about him.

He drives further along the road, heading into the centre of town. At the next corner he stops the car again.

They met when they were still in high school. Lisa doesn’t get the love he has for his dad, even though it’s thanks to him moving the family here that they ever got the chance to be together. John Winchester supported him when he started up his business, running a garage on the main road. It’s a livelihood they now depend on while Lisa studies to become a teacher.

More than what he left behind when he died, Dean loves his dad for all those times he remembers from his childhood. Taking care of him when he was sick, making him small toys when they couldn’t afford to buy them. Talking about baseball and playing it in the parking lot of a motel. Saying sorry first after they had a fight, about something stupid like Dean wanting to go to college, when they both knew all he really wanted was to run away. He loves his dad for being his dad. A lot of people never get that.

He starts up the car, parking outside a servo. Then he goes in, has a chat with Ash working the register, buys a pack of peanuts and calls Sam on his cell phone.

“Hey, Dean.”

“Hey.”

“If this is about last night, you don’t have to tell me twice. I get it. I know you’re worried about the money, but I’m applying for scholarships and it looks good. I still want to go to law school. It’s pretty important to me.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Dude, are you eating peanuts while you’re on the phone with me?”

“How’d you know?”

“I can hear the packet crinkling and crunching sounds. Gross. You called me, you know.”

“Yeah.” Dean hesitates before saying, “Lisa wants me to apologise.”

“What for?”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

“Good of you to make her happy, I guess.”

“Yeah, I kind of wanted to talk to you about it.”

“Right.”

“And the whole law school thing too, so don’t get yourself too disappointed.”

Sam’s laugh comes through the speakers of the phone. “Alright, Dean. What’s going on with Lisa?”

He’s quiet for a minute, thinking about his answer. “She kicked me out of the house last night.”

“What? Well, Dean, I guess we can spare a bed over here, but I don’t know how long the guys would be okay with it. Not to mention you’ve got to keep your work hours-”

“Calm down Sam, I don’t want to move in with you and your would-be frat boy roommates. It was just a fight and she’s cool about it now.”

“But...”

“She said you and me, we don’t get each other.”

“Oh no, Dean. You are not making this about your relationship with me. If you want to break up with her you can’t use your brother as an excuse-”

“She said she gets you but I don’t. And she went on this whole thing about how I’m treating you the way Dad treated me. I’m stopping you from making decisions.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“You let her get away with that?”

“What am I supposed to do, Sammy? She’s my girlfriend. She’s Lisa.”

“Well, did you tell her it’s not okay, at least?”

“I think, right this minute, I’m trying to work out if I want to tell her.” Dean pushes another item at Ash with a crumpled bill and a smile. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“I’m gonna ignore the fact that you just started eating some jerky. Are you saying you’re not sure if you want to keep dating Lisa?”

“How do you know what I’m eating? That’s kind of impressive, dude.”

“Not what we’re talking about.”

“Yeah, I...” With the jerky in his teeth, Dean runs his fingers through his hair. “Yeah. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. I’m not sure if that means...”

“If you don’t want to live with her anymore, that’s okay.”

“Well, yeah, it’s not about that. But that’s a thing too, I guess.”

“Before you get started on the candy bars, I’m gonna tell you that all the snack food in the world isn’t going to make this easier.”

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

Dean smiles to himself, leaning against a magazine rack.

“Yeah, so...are you gonna be okay? ‘Cause I’m here whenever, and like I said, there’s a bed if you need it. Just not...maybe not as great as the Impala.”

“You’re a good brother, Sammy.” 

“Don’t call me that. And thanks.”

The cell phone goes into his pocket and he waves at Ash before heading back out to the car. Then he drives to the centre of town, this time without stopping. It’s around nine on a Wednesday, so there aren’t many people around when he walks into the grocer. Ellen Harvelle almost runs into him with a mini-trolley stacked with beer slabs and mixer drinks, on a supply run for the Roadhouse before a gathering booked at the last minute. She apologises as she rushes past and he helps her load up the car because he thinks she might need it.

“Thanks, kid. Good to see you’re growing into those muscles.”

Dean flushes, remembering when he was a teenager and near-ransacked the Roadhouse with some friends looking for something to drink. Stupid times, stupid thing to do. “Yeah, I’ll see you Mrs. Harvelle.”

“Ellen, please.” She grins at him and ducks down into the car.

When he turns around his eyes catch on a flash of blue. Blue eyes, which look at him a little too long before moving away for the man who owns them not to have been staring. He’s shorter than Dean and slimmer, which is easy to tell from the navy shirt he’s wearing. He looks out of place and Dean’s never seen him before. Probably just passing through.  
Dean should let it go and he’s not sure why he doesn’t.

“What?” he asks the guy, walking right up to him.

The blue eyes turn back to him, unselfconsciously looking him up and down. Then they go to Dean’s and hold them. “I thought it was kind of you to help her.”

His voice is deeper, rougher than Dean expected and his eyes are hard to look away from.

“That’s it?” he says disbelievingly.

“That is all I will admit to.”

At that moment Dean remembers Lisa, their relationship, loving her, spending time with her because he wanted to, being happy sharing a house and a bed with her. The four years they’ve been together, longer than any of his other relationships, basically married already in a small town like this.

To think it only takes this intense blue staring back at him to forget all of that.

The man glances at his mouth and Dean unconsciously moves closer to him.

“My name is Castiel.”

“Dean.” He puts his hand out awkwardly and Castiel shakes it with warm, strong fingers. “Are you, uh, are you just passing through?”

“I am travelling to see my brothers.”

“Oh. I have a brother,” Dean offers.

It’s not much; the corner of his mouth lifts slightly, his eyes narrow a little, but Dean can tell that he is smiling. “Many people do.”

“Well, yeah.”

“I have three brothers.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. They are all older than me.”

This is a weird conversation to be having with a weird stranger and somehow it’s making him nervous, just standing here, wondering if the material of Castiel’s shirt is as soft as it looks and trying to stop himself thinking about completely inappropriate things. It all gets worse when, to his own dismay, Dean begins to babble. “I’m older than Sam. He’s really important to me, actually he’s going to go to law school-”

“I want to know what kissing you would taste like.”

Abruptly, he stops talking. Castiel is giving no indication he’s anything other than absolutely serious, considering Dean’s mouth with narrowed eyes as if it’s up for sale and he’s thinking about buying it.

“Really?”

“You are very attractive.”

Blood is pounding in his ears and he’s more than a little turned on. If he let himself think about it, the appeal of this guy is probably the timing. He’s just had an argument with his girlfriend of four years, he might be ending their relationship sometime soon for reasons he’s not even fully aware of yet. Though Dean’s always had an interest in men, when his dad was alive he was desperate to impress him and wouldn’t let anything happen. Especially not in a town like this, where the few guys he might have played around with moved away or married straight out of school.

So it’s only in appreciation for this heaven-sent opportunity he’s been given that he takes it.

It has absolutely nothing to do with those amazing blue eyes.

“Do you...want to go somewhere?” Dean asks.

Castiel’s eyes brighten and he nods. “Do you have anywhere to go?”

“Does it matter to you?”

A shake of the head.

That’s how Dean Winchester finds himself in his office at the garage, unlocking the door and locking it behind him, hesitating for only a second before he pushes forward and kisses Castiel as well and as deeply as he can. Castiel’s arms go tightly around his neck and he pushes back, chest on chest, tugging away a minute later to fight with Dean’s shirt. Dean laughs and gasps and pulls Castiel’s shirt—soft, yes, he knew it would be soft—over his head, fingers sliding over his chest, hot flushed skin.

Castiel’s hand winds up in his hair and he moans into Dean’s mouth as hands smooth over his back, he kisses his ear and jaw and what he can reach of his neck. Teeth dragging along his skin, heart pounding too hard in his chest, with hands at the back of Castiel’s thighs Dean lifts him onto the desk and tries to unbutton his pants, but as soon as Castiel realises what he’s doing his movements become frantic and he reaches blindly to do the same, hand rubbing along Dean’s cock. This is really not what he expected but he’s not going to say no to a good thing and God it is so good, so so good and raw and he needs it and when Castiel’s hand is around him and they’re rutting against each other, breathing when they can and kissing what they can, and when he comes and everything breaks apart and Castiel’s arms hold him up and his face is pressed into a man’s neck, sweaty and smelling like Lisa never could and never will, he realises that this is wrong.

But he wants it to be right. When they’ve recovered enough, Castiel’s fingers wind loosely through his hair and skim over his cheek and he’s kissed, lightly, one, two, three times and then on the mouth and Castiel’s smiling again in that almost imperceptible way and he tells him, “You taste very good.”

Dean closes his eyes tightly and makes a choking sound and presses his forehead to Castiel’s cheek and the words just come out. 

“This is wrong,” he says and that warmth and a human Castiel swirl into smoke and disappear.

“One down,” comes Gabriel’s voice.

“Fuck you.”

“That’s a good choice of topic.”

“Go away.”

“Castiel. My favourite little brother and I have to watch you debauching his fictional human self. When you, fictionally speaking, have a girlfriend and no history of attraction of men. You know what that says to me?”

“I don’t care.”

“It says to me that you’re hiding something. Real, non-fictional you. It also says to me that a lot of people are losing bets today, and that’s what I like to hear!” Gabriel grins widely and tosses a couple of ancient-looking coins into the air. They flash gold in the light of Dean’s different lives.

“You mean...angels are taking bets on me and Cas?” Dean says with growing horror.

“Not just angels. We’ve got a few from behind the gates. I heard the big man, daddy-o, put his wager in too. Raph almost didn’t accept it-”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

Gabriel puts on a mock-serious face. “I don’t joke about gambling. Not ever.”

“I thought that was one of your big sins or something.”

“The ten commandments are for humans.” The archangel shrugs and tosses up the coins again. “You didn’t do so well without them in the test run.” 

At most there are only a couple of steps between the lights and it’s easy for Dean to walk over to the next one. Before he touches it, he asks, “Wait—what do you mean by ‘behind the gates’?”

“I can’t tell you the specifics because Raph won’t let me have them, but I know your mom wagered that you’ll get married in one of the fictional worlds. Your dad bet against her. I think that’s just the beauty of undying love at work there, though-”

“Oh my God.” Dean scrunches up his eyes. 

“-Ellen, you remember Ellen? Lovely lady. She bet you’d end up with Castiel. A lot of people did, but she reckons you’ll end up with him in the real world. With the different species thing, Castiel’s unwavering loyalty to our heavenly Father and the UST that’s been there since basically the first time he entered your warehouse,” Gabriel pauses, “so to speak, the odds aren’t good. You should really think about doing her a favour and helping her win the pot-”

“Are you done? I don’t think I need to hear about this.”

Gabriel puts both of his hands up, coins suddenly gone. “Hey, it’s your life.”

“Yeah,” Dean says suspiciously.

“And our entertainment.”

“Dude! Whatever this,” Dean gestures his hand around them, “is, I’m not doing it for you. I want to get out of here. I want my memories – holy shit, did you just say _our_?”

“Didn’t I mention? This is getting broadcasted on every channel. As soon as I get the chance I’m going over to find out what your parents think about the choreography in the office scene-”

Because he can’t think of anything to say and isn’t stupid enough to punch out an archangel and the only person he’s seen in this black space, Dean escapes into the light.

* * *

**NIGHTMARES**

“Dean! Come on, son, get up!”

There are calloused fingers lightly hitting his cheek. It’s hard to open his eyes but he does it for his dad, who is holding his head and grimacing down at him. Dirt along his cheek like he’s been thrown, blood trailing from his brow, nothing serious, but that’s the expression Dean only sees when a hunt goes wrong.

He sits up, touching the back of his head and finding blood on his fingers. “I got hit?”

“It’s bad, but if you’re conscious we’re halfway to good. Grab your gun.”

The metal of the grip is cold and familiar. He holds onto it tightly and fights the dizzying pain when he tries to stand. John puts a hand on his arm, ready to support his weight if he stumbles.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“We’ll get you to Bobby’s. It’s twenty minutes in the car, if you think you can manage not to bleed all over the upholstery.”

If his dad’s joking this job really went to shit. “What about the vampires?”

John hesitates before gesturing at where they left the Impala. “Come on. Walk and talk. Are you gonna pass out on me again?”

“Sorry,” Dean says before he remembers they don’t say that. “I’ll, uh, tell you or something if...yeah.”

“You’re concussed.”

“Sorry.”

They parked close and come up to the car pretty quickly. He opens the door to the back seat, hoping with an edge of desperation that Dad’ll let him lie down. All he wants is to sleep, or hurt less. There’s the black of the lids of his eyes and then John is standing in front of him, almost the same height, wrapping a shirt loosely around his head so he doesn’t get red all over the seats. They’ve been lucky to get by without any real injuries so far. First aid isn’t either man’s strongest skill. You don’t get into hunting to live until you’re eighty.

“There were more of them than we thought,” John tells him in a low voice. “Skinny guy came up behind you and I thought you saw him.” He pauses the way he does sometimes. “I took him out, but they got away. Sorry about this, son.”

Dean laughs, though he isn’t sure why. John isn’t sure either and pushes him into the car, not saying anything when he curls up on the seat. They’re both quiet for the drive, but Dean’s blood pounds loudly in his ears, hurting him, making him want to cry or lose consciousness.

He’s vaguely aware of talking, getting helped out of the car and having holy water thrown at him by Bobby. He laughs again, but it hurts this time, then he’s lying on the slab in Bobby’s panic room and looking up at their faces while they murmur to each other and he’s convinced he’s bleeding out onto the floor. He can feel the warm liquid running down his fingers, hear it dripping. It’s in his veins like cold fire, burning through his body and seeping out of it, turning everything red.

“I’m going to die,” he hears himself say.

“It’s too much.”

“Kill me.”

Bobby looks tempted but his dad refuses. 

“I’ll hold a gun to your head before you point one at my boy.”

So his arm is lifted for him—he’s surprised to see it isn’t coated in red—and needles are jabbed in, injecting him with something for purification. They’re treating this like he was bitten, but this isn’t like the change, this is like a fire, rising violence inside of him burning him alive. Whatever it was doesn’t do anything and Dean keeps pleading with them to kill him or leave him to die in here.

“What happened to him? This ain’t no vampire bite.”

“I didn’t see it,” John admits. “He was passed out when I turned back to him.”

“Dad, no, Dad, this isn’t right, you have to kill me or just...get out of here, I can’t stop this now, just please, fuck, do it or I don’t know...”

Time passes. Bobby has his phone out and makes a call to another hunter who might have seen this before. John has a white-knuckled grip on the slab which he breaks only to push down Dean’s hand, which fights the restraints to try to reach out to him as he asks, over and over, to die. “You wouldn’t want this,” he hisses. “It’s just the pain talking.”

“It’s not the pain talking, it’s my mouth,” Dean says and laughs.

The blackouts start.

He’s laughing and then he’s staring up at the ceiling, water soaking his hair and clothes, running rivulets over his skin as it falls in droplets onto the stone.

Bobby’s curious face as he leans over him. “Now, boy, did that do you any good?”

“What was that for?”

“You sound better. Hope it wasn’t too cold for you.”

The water is just there, on his skin, weighing him down but not meaning anything besides.

“Cold?”

Another blackout.

His wrist is unrestrained and he raises his arm, toying with the hem of his damp shirt and brushing the skin underneath it. He reaches out blindly and grabs onto John, who grips his arm with both hands but doesn’t move away. Dean’s head slowly turns to him. “Why won’t you just kill me?”

“You’re my son.”

“There are two of us,” he points out.

“You’re both my sons.”

“Well.” Dean considers this as his fingers take out John’s hidden knife. “You’re my only dad.”

He throws the knife and the light shatters.

“Son of a bitch!” Bobby shouts.

Another blackout.

The room is dimmer now but there’s still light in it. He’s completely unrestrained and he stands, pushing his legs over the edge of the slab. Whether from blood loss or exhaustion he’s weak and shaking. His movements are jerky as he steps away from the slab, leaning with his palms against a wall, broken light over his shoulder.

There are candles on the other side of the room, melting wax onto the desk. Paint’s dried on the floor in symbols he’s never seen before. Bobby is slumped forward in his chair, fingers brushing the ground and cell phone lit up a few feet away.

He almost slips in some liquid. Gripping onto the slab for balance, Dean looks down to see his dad folded up half-under it, eyes barely open and surrounded by deep red blood. His lifeless hand is stretched out to the knife.

With shock and pain he kneels down next to John, touching his hand and shoulder and neck. Breathing thickly, he moves the knife into his hand, curving the fingers around it. He stares down at his dad’s face and realises, “This isn’t right.”

Everything swirls away and Dean sees his reality, endless black space and white lights.

Thankfully Gabriel isn’t here to talk him through that horror. So he goes to the next light and takes it.

* * *

**COLOUR CONTRAST**

His alarm clock is set to the local radio station. Asia’s playing when he wakes up enough to hear it. ‘Heat of the Moment’ finishes up as he’s easing himself out from the warm covers, yawning and stretching languidly.

“That one’s for you, Dean Winchester,” comes Jo’s voice over the radio. “Now get out of bed and go to work.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says and hits the snooze button.

After a shower he dresses in a suit, goes downstairs and tries to do his tie and drink coffee at the same time. The toast pops up and he holds it in his teeth so that he can get the front door open. It’s bright outside for this early in the morning. Just another sign that they’re coming into the warmer months, he figures as he gets the Impala going.

It’s a short drive into town and then he pulls up outside the police station. With his briefcase under one arm and teeth working on the toast, he walks quickly inside, waving at the people he works with and smiling around his breakfast.

“Good morning, Dean.” Sarah smiles at him when he nears her desk.

“Morning,” he says and sets his briefcase down on an empty seat. “Did Sam talk to you about that thing?”

“A thing?”

“Yeah, the thing.”

“What thing?”

The toast is finished and he cracks open the briefcase to make sure he has all his paperwork. Satisfied by the loose sheets he sees, he buckles it up again. “The thing where the two of you are coming over today.”

“Oh, that thing.” She nods and smiles indulgently. “Sorry Dean, but I don’t think that is a thing.”

“Is Campbell in yet?”

Sarah glances at the post-it notes that line her desk. “No, he’s taking James to school, but he’ll come by right after that. Sam didn’t tell me you wanted to have dinner with us, so we already have an appointment.”

“I didn’t know there was anywhere you could make appointments in a town like this.” He sits down so that they can talk. It’s too early in the morning for anyone to have need of him, anyway.

“An art gallery has opened up on Main Street. Sam and I thought it might be nice, you know, to check it out. You should come along with us tonight.”

“Sarah...”

“I know how you feel about art-”

“It’s a waste of time for people who want to look at things instead of go out and actually do them.”

“-but it’d be a chance to spend more time with us. There’s a restaurant attached, too. If you get bored you could always sit down and have something to eat.”

“I’d have to dress up, right? If I have to work in a suit I don’t want to wear it in my hours off.” Dean realises that the tie has loosened and yanks on it.

“Here.” Sarah leans over and reties it with quick, careful movements. “You could get away with a nice shirt and _not_ jeans. You don’t have to come, I just thought I would extend the offer. If your night’s free anyway-”

“Okay. If Sammy’s fine with it, I’ll...” He picks up the briefcase and smiles at her. “Thanks for the help.”

“That’s what I get paid for.”

“I’ll see you later, Sarah.”

As an investigator he has his own office, though his desk, cabinet and two chairs barely fit into it. The door has his name on it, which he always thought was stupid. In a department this size you couldn’t lose a pencil let alone yourself. Dean sets down the briefcase, files away the papers in it, deals with inquiring policemen from neighbouring counties, pins things onto a corkboard and otherwise does his job.

His day passes quickly and at the end of it he’s freshly showered, wearing a button-down that’s Sarah Blake approved and staring at a painting he think might be of a giant bird. Or a sideways horse. Whichever it is, he’s come a long way from waking up to Asia.

The gallery is softly lit and classical music plays from well-hidden speakers. Crystals are suspended from the ceiling, catching the light and sending out rainbows. Aside from a couple of portraits, Dean has no idea what the paintings are supposed to be. They’re complicated and colourful and he kind of doesn’t want to look at them too long.

He frowns and turns away from the misshapen starfish. There’s a man standing behind him that he didn’t see somehow and he almost walks straight into him. “Oh, shit! Uh, sorry.”

“You didn’t like it?”

The voice is quiet and deep and makes Dean want to shiver.

“No,” he says unthinkingly. “Uh, I mean...you know, art’s not my thing. I’m just here with my brother, you should talk to him about it-”

“Which one is your brother?” The man looks around the room.

“Yeah, he’s just...” Dean waves furiously at Sam from behind the man’s back. When he gets his brother’s attention, Sam looks between them, laughs to himself and then leads Sarah down the steps to the restaurant. He watches his only escape from this man’s attractiveness walk further and further away. “Yeah, uh, I guess he’s...hungry.”

The man turns back to him, amused. “Then I will have to speak with you.”

“I’m not joking, man. This...isn’t anything I can deal with. Art and stuff. I’m more into cars and football.”

“Your honesty is refreshing.”

“Yeah?” Dean plays with the collar of his shirt which is chafing his neck a little. “Do you, uh, do you come here often?”

When the man smiles at him his heart speeds up and he can’t help but smile back. “I work here as a curator.”

“You do.”

“Yes. My father owns the gallery and my brother manages the restaurant. As much as I would like to say that I work here of my own ability, it is unfortunately nepotism.”

He’s pretty much blown this already so there’s no point working himself up about it. Dean messes with his cuffs and smiles sheepishly at the man. “Well, it looks great. Like I said, I’m not into this sorta thing but the place looks really good.”

The man smiles more widely. “Thank you...”

“Dean,” he says and shakes his hand. “Winchester. I work over at the police station, if you ever run into any trouble.”

“My name is Castiel Milton.”

“I haven’t heard that before.”

Castiel flushes, though he must be asked about his name pretty often. “My father has a sense of humour. He named each of us after angels. My brothers, Michael, Raphael and Gabriel, and my sister Anael. However, no one in my family is devout.”

“Your dad sounds like a fun guy. Yeah, it’s just me and Sam over there.” Dean runs his fingers along the inside of the collar to ease the pressure of it on his skin. “Did you all just move here, or what?”

“Yes,” Castiel murmurs. He is staring intently at Dean’s throat, which means he sees him swallow nervously when he steps in close. His fingers come up to undo the uppermost button. Dean can feel the warmth of his body, count each individual eyelash, breathe in the scent of his hair. “There is no need for you to feel uncomfortable,” he says by way of explanation.

“How forward of you, Cassie,” comes a stranger’s voice.

Castiel takes a step back. “Dean Winchester, this is my brother, Gabriel.”

The guy in question is standing next to them, grinning like art is the funniest joke he’s ever heard. 

“Not much of a family resemblance, is there,” Dean says wryly.

“I’ll take that as a compliment if it means you don’t want to get in my pants. Cassie, Dad wants to check the numbers with you. Better go up.” 

“Yes, of course.”

When he’s disappeared up the stairs Gabriel turns to Dean, suddenly less than smiles. “That’s my kid brother you were talking to. What are you doing with him?”

“It was just a talk, man, settle down-”

“Are you gay? Is that what this is about?”

“What? I don’t want to talk about this with you. It’s none of your business.”

“It’s more than my business. It’s my job,” Gabriel pauses, “as his big brother. To look out for him when strange men are trying to hit on him in art galleries.”

“Are you doing the whole protective brother thing? Because I get that, dude, I do. I’ve got a brother. And yeah, maybe I’d be weird if I found him talking to a guy I thought he might be interested in. But it’s not like we were doing anything more than talking-”

“How about this? Whatever you do to my brother, I’ll do to yours.”

Dean stares at him. “That’s a pretty weird threat.”

“I am absolutely prepared to follow through with it.”

“I mean, if I take Cas on a date with candles and flowers and expensive food and all of that, you’re going to try the same with Sammy?”

“You-”

“If we start a relationship and somewhere along the line we move in together, are you going to try to move in with Sam? Because I don’t think Sarah’s going to be up for that.”

“That’s-”

“If I wake up next to him every morning and tell him I love him, go in for the husband-and-wife kiss before I go to work, are you going to try that with Sam? Maybe I should let you down easy, but there is no way in hell that’s happening. Not only is he not into dudes but he’s also pretty happy with his girlfriend-”

“I don’t know what Cassie sees in you.”

“At this point he’s probably not looking too far past my handsome face,” Dean says easily. “Are you done? Yeah, okay. Good talk.”

There are only a couple of steps down to the dining area and the front door. Ignoring the obvious flirting that Sam and Sarah are doing, he pulls a chair up to their table and sits down.

“So how did that go?” Sam asks with a smile playing at his lips.

“‘That’ went upstairs and left me with his hostile older brother.”

“Sounds familiar,” Sarah teases.

“I wasn’t that bad.”

“You were bad enough.”

Dean childishly sticks his tongue out at her and she laughs.

“What did you think of the guy? He’s handsome.”

“Thanks, Sammy, I really want you scoping out potential boyfriends for me.” He picks up a paper flower from the table and twirls it between his fingers. “He’s the gallery curator.”

That earns him sharp intakes of breath.

“Oh, well, he’s too good for you then,” Sam jokes. “Really? You know, I might want to meet him. Sarah and I were saying that the arrangement of the works is unconventional-”

“I don’t...yeah, that’s probably not going to happen. If his brother doesn’t turn him against me, I...”

“‘You’ what, Dean? Look, you can’t just run out on this because you’re not sure about it. If you’re interested in him then you should take a chance.”

The paper flower is white on one side and red on the other. As he spins it the colours blend together into something like pink, dividing again as it slows. “There’s just something about this,” Dean murmurs. “Like it doesn’t feel real.”

“I don’t think I like what art galleries do to you, man.”

“Yeah. I think I’m gonna go.” Dean pushes his chair back and stands.

“Are you sure? We haven’t eaten yet-”

“It’s okay, Sammy. They probably don’t do burgers here anyway.” He leans over to kiss Sarah on the cheek. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow. Have a good night without me.”

“Yeah. Bye.”

When he steps out into the warm night air, he feels like he’s done the wrong thing. By leaving Sam there when he wants him to stay. By tucking the flower into the cuff of his stupid shirt. By not waiting for Cas and letting his brother get to him.

Coincidence intervenes before he can spend too much time regretting what hasn’t happened. Castiel is standing in the alleyway on one side of the building, holding a side door open, about to go back inside when they see each other. Light shines out and around him and it’s beautiful. Dean walks up to him and he waits there until he’s close enough to reach out and touch. Then the door shuts quietly, it’s pale moonlight and luminescent blue, easy silence and racing heartbeats.

Castiel pries open the buttons of his shirt cuffs and Dean rolls the sleeves up to his elbows. He smiles with tentative pride and Dean grins back. Next his careful fingers are loosening the collar, smoothing over his shoulders with the faint rustle of fabric. They rest there and Dean pulls him in with a hand at the small of his back. For a moment it’s just standing close, letting their eyes adjust to the darkness, considering each other, breathing in the same air. Then they kiss, gently, a first kiss between people who care enough not to ask too much of each other, hoping for more nights like this, intimacy, love.

They kiss long enough for people to come looking for Castiel. The door bursts open and Gabriel sees them pushed up against a wall and breathless and swears.

Dean wonders if Sam’s still around to watch him get his ass kicked by a guy named after an angel. He doesn’t have to wonder long because it never happens. Cas smiles into his neck and he hides his face in his hair and there’s that feeling again, that this isn’t real, that they aren’t standing here, it’s too good to be true... “This isn’t right,” he says and hates himself for it when everything swirls away.

Before Gabriel can say anything he goes on to the next light.

* * *

**THE EVERYDAY ROUTINE**

Sam’s awake and crying loudly. Kicking off the sheets, Dean rushes around the bed to pick up and soothe his little brother, petting and rubbing his back the way Dad taught him. Sam’s tiny fingers curl up into his shirt and he wets Dean’s shoulder with tears. “Hey, shh, Sammy, gotta be quiet, are you hungry? You better be hungry ’cause I don’t know what else I can do for you. Shh, come on, Sammy, I’m here.”

He tells his brother all the nice, comforting things he always wanted to hear. Holding tightly on to his small body, Dean takes some baby food out of the fridge and the special spoon they bought so Sam could learn how to eat. It’s hard to get the package open with one hand, but he manages it and sits down with Sam half on his knee, offering him a spoonful of the banana and pear mush.

“Hey, you hafta eat it! I opened it and we can’t take it back now, so come on.”

Sam fusses, moving his mouth away from the spoon at the last second and making complaining noises. It usually takes a while to get him to start eating. Dad says he doesn’t understand yet that your stomach hurts when you want food. Dean’s used to taking care of his baby brother and he persists with the mush, only getting a little on Sam’s cheek before he settles down and lets the spoon in.

He’s feeling really proud of himself and laughs when Sam hiccups. “I guess you’ll be thirsty next, huh?” Dean nudges his nose against Sam’s and gets hit by his wildly waving hand.

When the food is gone and he’s given him some water, Dean hugs Sam and walks around the room with him, talking to keep them both entertained. “When do you think Dad’ll come back? He really loves you, Sammy, he’ll think you’re awesome for all the good eating you did today. No other baby is half as good as you. Yeah? Are you up to watching some TV? I don’t think cartoons are on now. That’s okay, I brought some books up from the lobby. You just hafta be careful with those if we play with them.”

Half an hour’s spent playing hiding games. Dean sits on the floor with Sam in his lap, showing him something then putting it behind his back. Every now and then he’ll show him both of his hands, empty, asking him where it could have gone. Sam loves this sort of thing. He’s going to be a smart kid, Dean just knows.

Sam crawls around the floor but gets tired quickly. When that happens he flops over Dean’s legs and stares up at him with his big brown eyes. The novelty of being a big brother hasn’t worn off yet—maybe it never will—and Dean could happily cuddle with him all day, but Sam gets fidgety and wants to explore the room, or play, or listen to the stories Dean reads to him. He shows him finger puppets, changes his diaper every couple of hours, makes him cry more than once. Then Sam’s day is done and he falls asleep before Dean can even bundle him up in his blankets.

It’s a while before Dad said he’d come home. Dean’s hungry and wants to go outside but he has to stay and look after Sam, no exceptions, no opening the door for anything. So he opens the window a little way and eats a few slices of bread and a banana while he watches Sam sleep. If the TV comes on too loud then he’ll wake up, so Dean sits there, cross-legged on the floor in a motel room, watching his little brother who he loves more than anything and wishing that their dad would come home with lots of money and their mom was still alive and bad things never happened to any of them.

He remembers fire, running out of the house, his dad shouting. He cries to himself as quietly as he can, hunched over the edge of the bed and hiding his tears in the blankets.

The emergency phone rings and Dean rubs his face dry as he picks it up. Wait for the other person to speak first, that’s the rule.

“You doin’ okay, boy?”

“Yes, Uncle Bobby.”

“Got enough to get you by?”

“We bought bananas yesterday,” he tells him with a hint of pride.

He can hear Bobby’s smile in his voice. “Aw, you must be rolling in it. That’s good to hear.”

“They’re the big kind.”

“I’ll bet. Say, is your dad there?”

“No. Sorry, Uncle Bobby.”

“Don’t apologise for him, boy. You know I understand what you three are going through-”

“You’ve gotta be real quiet, Uncle Bobby. Sammy’s gone to sleep,” Dean says in a loud whisper. It’s true enough for him to not feel bad about lying, but really it’s because he hates hearing Bobby talking like they’re in trouble. They’re alive and Sam’s happy and Dean keeps a gun underneath the bed, they don’t need pity, even from an old family friend.

“Yeah, alright. You’re a good kid, Dean.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll be seeing the lot of you at Christmas, got that? Make sure your dad knows.”

“Okay. Bye, Uncle Bobby.”

There’s a kindly grunt over the line and then the phone call is over.

Dean gets up and closes the window, drawing the curtains in so he can pretend that it’s night-time. He drinks a glass of water, checks on Sam real quick, goes to the toilet and has the TV going at a low volume when keys jingle outside the door. He goes to the gun, just in case, and relaxes when John comes in, duffel bags in his arms.

The bags are set down, the door is locked and John heads straight to Sam. He strokes his son’s hair without waking him and Dean wonders if he did that when he was a baby too. Neither of them say a word as John gulps down water in the kitchenette, checking the fridge to see what they ate that day. He settles down with Dean in front of the TV. They watch black and white comedies that they can’t quite hear and John offers him some of his banana.

“Are we staying here again?” Dean asks quietly.

“Yeah.”

It’s been over a week in this small town, in this small room. They’ve never stayed anywhere this long before. John goes out sometime in the early morning and comes back when he says he will. They usually buy food when they’re driving but yesterday they ran out and had to go to the store ten minutes out of town.

“Dad?”

“What is it, kiddo?”

“Uncle Bobby says he wants us for Christmas.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Please?”

“I already said I’d think about it, Dean,” John tells him sternly.

Sam makes noises in his sleep but thankfully doesn’t wake himself up.

On the small TV screen a man is picked up by an elephant wearing a hat.

Dean stares at the banana skin and thinks to himself, “This is wrong.”

It swirls away and he’s an adult again, but the lights look like stars.

* * *

**CAN YOU HEAR IT?**

“Dean?”

He shifts in his chair, propping his elbows on the wooden arms. There’s a gentle breeze rustling the leaves of the trees and the occasional sound of a car passing. “Yeah, Sammy?”

“I wasn’t sure if you were asleep,” Sam says, relieved.

“I sort of was. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.” The boards of the patio creak under Sam’s weight as he sits down next to his brother, holding his hand in warm fingers. It’s an old habit from when Sam was a kid and didn’t understand blindness and hey, it makes Dean feel better, so he’s not going to stop him. “Got some more groceries. There are apples on the counter.”

“Thanks.”

They sit in silence until Sam says, “I think I’m gonna ask Jessica out.”

“Really? That’s great, man! She’ll be way better for you than Ruby was-”

“I don’t get what your problem was with her.”

“A drug habit and two ex-boyfriends locked up in prison is what my problem is with her.”

“You shouldn’t blame the victim, Dean,” Sam chastises. 

“Yeah, think what you want. But I like Jessica. She sounds pretty. Her voice has that,” he waves his hands in the air, “quality.” He grins when he hears Sam start laughing.

“‘Quality’.”

“Hell yes. Just let me guess—she’s blonde...not much make-up...uh, small feet...”

“How do you know all that?”

Dean smiles and leans over to where he knows Sam is sitting. “Quality.”

“Ha.” The fingers curled around his tighten and then let go. “I should get back to work.”

“Sure. I’ll see you later.”

There’s the creaking of Sam walking back to the door. “You’re telling me how you did that.”

Dean just waves at him and listens to the screen easing shut. Footsteps through the house, then a car starting up before the door’s even closed. Ten bucks he hasn’t even done up his seatbelt. The Impala drives smoothly off on the curve of the road, leaving Dean with the quiet of a residential area in the early afternoon. After a minute he gets up and goes in. 

The apples are in the usual place and he takes a bite of one as he walks up the stairs.

It’s his house during work hours, since Dad isn’t comfortable with the idea of him having a job. There was a handicapped guy out in Eudora who got seriously injured in an accident a couple of years back. He was an idiot and he wasn’t blind, but Dad’s overprotective since Mom died and Dean’s happy to stay at home anyway.

Putting the apple down, he cracks open the window to let in some fresh air. Then he thumbs through his CDs, occasionally running his fingertips over the labels Sam made him in Braille. Everything’s ordered and memorised but it’s good to be sure. Dean finishes the apple, puts a CD into the player and hoists his guitar over his thigh.

The afternoon passes easily and he tries to think nothing of it when he gets up and finds the window closed. It’s hard to do when, as he’s going through the hallway, there’s a clattering sound from the bedroom at the end. Dean stands still and listens but nothing out of the ordinary happens. 

That’s the room where Mom died. They don’t use it anymore. Dean has refused to go anywhere near it for the last fifteen years, though his brother and father are okay with sitting in there sometimes and looking at the stuff that she touched. That’s why he shakes his head and goes downstairs to make himself some cereal and wait for the front door.

* * *

The next day is easy too. Dad’s gone before he wakes up and Sam tells him over breakfast about the conversations he’s had with Jessica, sounding like he’s ten and they’re the presents he got at Christmas. Then he goes too and Dean reads a book in Braille just so he won’t lose the skill. He gets some music playing and stands outside the disused bedroom until he shakes off the weird feeling that something’s going on in there. In the afternoon he plays guitar, stopping to answer a call.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey. Have we run out of milk yet?”

“Still got half a carton.”

“I’ll grab some on the way home.” A pause. “Are you doing okay? I can hear the guitar there.”

“Yeah, I’m just working on something.”

“Let me hear it later. Nothing going on around the house?”

Dean’s fingers still on the guitar strings. “Nah. Just the same old stuff.”

“Yeah, I... You know I wouldn’t leave you there if I had a choice, son.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Really.” Another pause. “I’ll be back early tonight.”

“Cool. See you then.”

The call ends and he tosses the phone across the floor, going back to his music. After a while his fingers begin to feel cold and start tripping on the strings. His heart beating more quickly than he’d like, Dean puts the guitar back and runs his hand along the edge of the window.

It’s open.

He shuts it and stands out in the hallway again.

Nothing happens.

“You’re going crazy, that’s all, you’re just going crazy,” Dean mutters to himself as he sits on his bed in another room and reaches for the landline, just to reassure himself it’s there next to the photo of his mom he can’t see and the amulet Sam gave him when they were kids.

It’s as if all the windows in the house explode open, curtains gusting out in great, cold bursts of air, tangling up with his arm and freaking him the fuck out. Downstairs the screen door is screeching open and shut and Dean wishes they were the kind of family that kept guns in the house as he fumbles for the handset.

Then it’s over and there’s a voice.

“Dean Winchester,” it says, sounding like church bells and choir voices and beer bottles clinking together and passionate guitar solos that Dean’s listened to and loved all his life.

“Who are you?” he asks when he should be saying ‘Get out of my house.’

“My name is Castiel and I am an angel of the Lord.”

Dean scoffs at that, but the guy doesn’t say anything more. “What, really? You have to be the weirdest burglar I’ve ever heard of.”

“I am not a burglar, Dean,” the voice tells him seriously. “Nor am I human.”

“You’re an angel.”

“Yes.”

“One of God’s messengers, prancing around in a white robe and answering people’s prayers, is that it?”

There’s a pause before the voice says, “We are not as you have been told.”

“Well, whatever. I didn’t pray for you, dude, so you’re gonna have to go and do this somewhere else.”

“Dean.” The guy manages to sound confused and stern at the same time. “I am not here to do your bidding. I am here for your protection.”

Either this guy’s the real deal or he’s a lunatic who’s broken violently into Dean’s home. He should be careful, or even just more...worried than he is, but listening to that musical voice is relaxing. “I don’t need protection. If you’re an angel, why don’t you go find someone who wants God to take care of them.”

“Even if you do not believe in my Father, you are in danger and I am here to defend your life.”

Okay.

He sighs and moves his hand away from the phone. “What’s with the voice?”

“I am pleased that you can understand it. Only a few humans are able to withstand an angel’s true voice. You were not born with this capacity. However when a sense, such as sight, is lost at an early age it may alter perception of supernatural beings, including those of Heaven.”

That pisses him off for some reason. “So I can hear you because I’m blind?”

“There was a chance you might have been unaffected-”

“A chance?” he interrupts.

“Yes, Dean. It was a risk appearing to you in this form-”

“Let’s pretend for a second that I believe there’s an angel in my room right now, talking to me.” Dean turns his body towards the voice for emphasis. “What would have happened to me if you were wrong?”

There’s a pause before he gets his answer. “At best, it would have been incomprehensible to you. In any other eventuality, you would have been deafened.”

“Are you serious?! It’s not enough that I’m blind, you would’ve made me deaf? God, you have a fucking misdirected idea of what protecting me means-”

“I am merely following orders. I apologise for the risk that I took on your behalf. However, arranging for a human vessel would have been problematic.”

“Screw problematic! You don’t take a chance like that, not if there’s another way _right fucking there!_ ”

“I understand that you are upset, Dean, but had I been delayed in getting here the risk would have been far greater-”

There’s the too-loud sound of glass shattering.

An arm is thrust around him, bracing him against an impact that never comes. It doesn’t feel solid but it’s warm and Dean doesn’t shake it off, believing, just a little bit, that Castiel is an angel and he’s here to save him. 

“What was that?” he asks breathlessly.

“Demons.”

“They’re not-”

Nails scratching along rock. Whispers too quiet to make out and too intrusive to ignore.

He’s not sure if it’s his idea or Castiel’s that they go out into the hallway. The arm pulls away so there’s only the reassuring warmth of a hand on Dean’s shoulder.

The sounds are coming from Sam’s old bedroom, he realises.

“I can only keep them away for a short time. Only you can absolve the room and permanently banish the forces of evil in this house.”

Dean laughs because this is ridiculous and way more frightening than he’d ever admit. 

“So I guess I’m the ‘chosen one’?”

There’s silence, like Castiel is seriously considering the appropriateness of that title. “You are the ‘righteous man’ and the chosen weapon of Heaven, in accordance with the prophecy.”

“I was joking.”

“Oh. I do not understand many of these human concepts.”

That makes Dean laugh again, genuinely this time. “You’re like E.T., man.” He takes the angel’s hand and presses one of the fingers to his own chest. “‘I’ll be right here’.”

“Dean.”

“Yeah, okay. Demons.” He lets go of Castiel’s hand and inexplicably misses the warmth.

“They are only able to enter the house through that room. Though it has been salted and is guarded by the same defences as the rest of the house, its connection to your mother’s death and the powerful demon that she made a deal with enables it to serve as a gateway to Hell.”

“Hold on. What are you talking about? Salt?”

The hand rests on his shoulder again and Castiel says, almost sympathetically, “You must talk to the other Winchesters.”

A cool wind sweeps around him. Castiel is gone and the demons have fallen silent. Then his dad’s coming through the front door, rustling plastic bags and stepping heavily on the hardwood floor.

Dean follows his instinct, which is to find his cell phone and call his little brother. Who, as always, picks up after the first ring.

“Hi, Dean! What’s up?”

“Sammy, I don’t know how to tell you this without sounding crazy-”

“What happened?”

“Uh, yeah. An angel told me to talk to you.” He winces, immediately regretting saying it that way. If he’s lucky Sam’ll only give him shit for this for as long as it takes him to explain it properly.

“What did they say?”

“What?”

“The angel. Are they still there?”

“No, Sam, the angel is not still here. Which is great because you going deaf would really suck, I can’t learn sign language-”

“Calm down. Don’t hyperventilate until you’ve told me what they said.”

“Yeah, he, uh, told me to talk to you. About the salt.”

Silence, then: “Oh shit.”

“Sam?”

“You’re going to hate me for this, but I’ve got to talk to Dad before I say anything about it to you-”

“Dad’s here. He just got home.”

“Awesome. Can you put him on?”

He goes down the stairs, making what he hopes is a good ‘I know what you did last summer’ face in his dad’s direction. The fridge door closes, plastic bags rustle some more, then John’s sitting with him at the counter and asking, “Who’s on the phone?”

“Sam.”

“Yeah?”

“No, I was just telling Dad you’re talking to me.”

“Are you going to put him on now?”

“Nah, I think I’d like to hear what you both have to say about this.” He speaks more loudly so John understands that he’s talking to him. “So, an angel came by today-”

“Are you alright?” is John’s immediate response.

“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine. But it turns out demons are trying to break into Sam’s old room and you guys are hiding something from me.”

A long, painful silence, until John takes the phone out of his hand. “You checked on the salt lines like I asked you? Bobby said those devil’s traps’d work. Yeah, I don’t want to tell him that either. Maybe the angel can tell us more about it. I don’t know. Check it out at the library, we’ll keep you on the phone. For God’s sake, tell me you’ve got the Colt on you. Good. I’m putting you on speaker.” He sighs. “It’s time we told your brother.”

The phone is put on the counter and John leads Dean’s fingers to it, so he can know exactly where it’s placed. “Dean, I can’t say I ever wanted you to find out about this. It’s your mom’s secret and I didn’t want to put you in danger with it. Hell, the only reason I dragged Sam down with me is so I could have someone carrying the guns.”

Sam laughs a little wryly. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Yeah. Dean, your brother and I are hunters.”

“Are you kidding me? Sam’s a pacifist!”

“I only kill bad things. And, uh, turns out there’s a lot of bad stuff out there.”

“Like demons?”

“They don’t like salt. Or holy water. I don’t think we have to tell you what we did to the water tank...”

“A lot of what you hear about...restless spirits, vampires, shifters, they’re real,” John tells him. “Angels too, but we haven’t met any of those yet.”

He takes a minute to process that. “So I’m supposed to believe that while I’ve been sitting at home, you’re going out and being badass vampire hunters?”

“I didn’t want to put you through it. When I started this you were already blind, and it was easy to lie to you when you couldn’t see what was going on. I know you won’t like it, Dean, but it was an excuse I could make to myself to keep one of my kids safe, even if I had to put the other one through hell.”

“That’s why you won’t let me get a job?”

“It sucks, but it really makes sense,” Sam says sympathetically. It sounds like he’s started up the car, probably heading to the library. “Not a lot of hunters get to go home at the end of the day. What we have, it’s way better than sleeping in a different motel every other night. You were keeping it safe for us and we didn’t want you to worry.”

“Your mom was a hunter. I didn’t know it when I married her. I only found out when she died and I had to look out for you two.” A pause. “She made a deal with a demon and it killed her.”

Dean puts his face in his hands. “In the room upstairs?”

A lullaby coming faintly out from Sam’s room. Walking down the hallway with wide eyes and light footsteps. Mom talking to someone with a low, stilted voice. The acrid smell of smoke, the crackling of flames. A knife on the floor and drops of blood. Mom, pressed against the ceiling and burning alive. Sam’s mobile, stars and moons twirling gently. A wide smile. Yellow eyes. 

Then nothing. Blind for the rest of his life.

He refused to go anywhere near that room and John never asked him why.

“Yes. We got him, Dean. We hunted him down and killed him.”

That doesn’t make him feel better at all. In fact he feels sick, knowing that his dad and kid brother are capable of killing things at all, even sons of bitches like the yellow-eyed demon.

“The angel said the demons are getting through there?” asks Sam over the phone.

“Castiel. He said the defences aren’t working, or something. He’s keeping them away for now but I have to stop them. There’s a prophecy.”

“Will he come and talk to us?”

“No. Apparently angels are too tripped out for people to hear him without going deaf. I’m lucky enough to be blind so we’re okay,” he says sarcastically.

After that the conversation goes from shocking to useful, at least for the hunters involved. A couple of hours later the sun has set. John and Sam are doing research on angels and prophecies in the living room with the books they’ve borrowed from the library. Occasionally they’ll read out a Bible verse or firsthand account of angelic possession by people claiming to be ‘vessels’. It gets boring for Dean pretty quickly, especially since none of the books are in Braille, so he goes up to his room and locks the door behind him.

For good measure, he puts his hands together and bows his head.

“Yo. Could you send down the guy I was talking to before? Cas. That’d be awesome, thanks.”

This time there’s no wind and he’s surprised by Castiel’s voice, saying, “Hello, Dean.” It’s close to his ear and his shoulder feels warm, so he takes a step away.

“Whoa, dude. Personal space. Don’t they teach you about that in angel school?”

“It is another human concept I have yet to fully understand.” Then, “I see you have the Colt.”

He’d been handed the small gun and given a quick lesson in how to use it. Aim and pull the trigger, basically. No matter that without his eyesight the aiming part was damn near impossible. Dean figures he could always get in close and press the barrel into his target’s chest if he had to. “Yeah.”

“You do not believe that I am here for your protection.”

“I believe you, Cas,” he says and means it. “Dad and Sam though, they’ve never talked to you before. So. Yeah. Sorry about that. If it makes you feel better I’m not planning on shooting you anytime soon.”

“Thank you.” Castiel sounds like he’s smiling.

“No problem.”

“Dean.”

“Yeah?”

“You prayed for me this time.” 

Okay, he’s definitely smiling.

And maybe Dean’s smiling too. “Yeah. I did.”

They stand for a while in weirdly comfortable silence.

“They won’t find anything about the prophecy,” Castiel tells him. “The words of the Father are kept safely in the archives of Heaven, revealed only to His children when and how He chooses.”

“You said only I could get rid of the demons.”

“Yes. Only a Winchester can undo what has been brought about by Mary Winchester’s sacrifice. Your father and brother spent years pursuing revenge, making deals with demons in order to have it. Only your soul is pure enough to fulfil the prophecy.”

Yellow eyes. Loss of sight, which he always resented.

“Maybe I wanted revenge too,” Dean says quietly.

There’s warmth along his body and fingers brushing his face. “You did not. Not truly.”

“How can you know that?”

“I can see your soul. It is loving.”

“Yeah?” Dean puts his fingers over Castiel’s. “I don’t think E.T. could do that.”

“I asked one of my brothers about this ‘E.T.’”

He tries not to laugh. “What did he say?”

“Dean. I am not an alien,” Castiel tells him sternly.

“All I’m saying is you’re _like_ an alien. With no sense of humour and the personal space thing...”

The warm hand is drawn away. “Do you not like me touching you? I thought this was how humans offered comfort and affection.”

“Hey, I’m okay with it. It’s not like I know where you are without it, anyway.” Dean frowns. “This is going to sound weird to you, but can I touch your face? It’s a way for me to know what you look like. If, you know, angels look like anything-”

“Of course.”

He stands there stupidly for a second and then says, “Cool.”

Then his hand trails along the warm, not-quite-solid arm, up to Castiel’s neck, which doesn’t have a pulse. His bared skin is a lot warmer than where he’s wearing clothes. Dean wonders if he wasn’t kind of on the money with the white robes thing. He soon finds out that the neck is the hottest part of him, at least that Dean is touching, and his hair is warm too. It’s pleasantly soft on the backs of Dean’s fingers as they move up past his ear to rest on his cheek.

Now that he knows where he’s allowed to be touching, his other hand goes up and together they map out the easy contours of Castiel’s face. He has eyebrows and eyelashes, warm like his hair. His brow has a knot in it that eases when Dean’s fingers skim over it. Cheekbones he can feel beneath the skin, so maybe angels don’t work so differently. A strong nose. Soft, but narrow lips. No matter how many seconds pass Castiel doesn’t take a breath.

“You feel pretty human for an angel.”

“We were all made in our Father’s image.”

“Do you have a soul?” he asks, curious suddenly.

“I have Grace.” Castiel gently puts Dean’s hand over his chest, where his heart would be if he were human. It’s hot enough to burn but only makes his skin tingle with sensation. And, suddenly, “Oh. The demons are mounting an attack.”

“Kind of ruining the mood here, Cas.”

“Your mood does not matter to me as much as your life.”

“Alright,” he says resignedly. “What are they-”

The floor shakes beneath their feet and he can hear the framed picture of his mom clattering on the bedside table.

“You are the only living Winchester capable of loving unconditionally. ‘Blind, as love is blind.’ I cannot guide you, but I will protect you.” Castiel disappears without any further explanation.

“Dean!” shouts Sam and then the bedroom door is kicked down.

“God damn it, Dean! You don’t put a gun in your pocket!”

He takes it out to appease his dad, holding it firmly in his palm. “Better?”

“Don’t point it at us either,” Sam says warily.

“Oh, my bad.”

“Did you talk to the angel?”

“Yeah-”

Nails scraping, a thousand people whispering, breaking glass, battering, howls of frustration and anger and pain. Above it all are the faint strains of the lullaby he heard the night Mom died. 

_There shall no one come to harm thee_  
_Naught shall ever break thy rest_

“Did he tell you what you’re supposed to do?”

Dean’s fingers tighten around the handle of the gun. “Do you hear that?”

_There shall no one come to harm thee_  
_Naught shall ever break thy rest_

Over and over again, those two lines of the song Sammy used to fall asleep to. It was just a mobile. Bad memories. He’s never learned the words before, never realised the irony.

“No, what are you-”

He pushes past his brother and goes out into the hallway. The whispering quiets, the violence stops, so all he can hear is the lullaby, louder and louder the closer he gets to the bedroom.

He opens the door.

Now he can hear the battering again, like the demons are physically throwing themselves against whatever’s keeping them out of the room. There are snarling cries and the house shakes, Sam’s abandoned toys falling to the floor, almost tripping him as Dean walks across it. It’s all coming from the side of the room that ordinarily faces out onto the road.

Gunshots and piercing shrieks. John and Sam are taking out however many demons they can.

“The salt lines aren’t gonna hold!”

“There’s still the devil’s traps, if they break through-”

“We can’t let them near your brother!”

“We’re gonna run out of bullets. Dean, what did the angel tell you?”

He listens to the sounds of death and destruction.

“I don’t think he can hear us. I could try to exorcise them-”

“That is the last thing we try, Sam! Your mother didn’t make a deal with Yellow-Eyes so you could get fancy powers and taint yourself with demon blood!”

Screaming and sadistic laughter.

“They’ve broken through!” John shouts desperately.

“I don’t-” 

“What-” 

Dean can’t see what’s happened to the other Winchesters, but the shooting stops and he can hear claws tearing at the carpet. There’s an already familiar warmth standing between him and where the demons must be pouring out. “It was necessary for them to lose consciousness, so that I could appear to you.”

“Cas,” he gasps and presses his face into the angel’s back. Feels the movement of Castiel’s body as he tears down the demons that screech and rush at them. Hears the explosions and violence and hatred. With sudden realisation, he says, “Cas, you have to stop.”

“I am here to protect you.”

“Stop!” Dean grasps for his arm but it’s moving too quickly, striking down the demons that he can’t even see, who want to climb all over him and kill him like his mom.

“These are my orders.”

His hands are shaking.

He presses the Colt into Castiel’s back.

Whispers, “Cas.”

And pulls the trigger.

The bullet tears through his Grace and Dean has never felt so glad to be blind as when Castiel crumples to the ground in front of him. He lets the gun slip from his fingers. It’s wrong, so fucking wrong, but he traded one life for countless others. An angel for the demons. 

Who are now absolutely silent. No singing, no screaming, no laughing.

“You’re welcome,” he tells them chokingly and then his legs give out.

Castiel is still warm. Dean presses his forehead against him, winds his fingers up in his robe and cries, expecting the demons to rush over him and kill him in a moment, make it hurt more than a bullet would. They never do. 

Instead there’s the sound of a heavy door slamming shut and angelic voices.

“I hope for your sake that my true voice does not deafen you.”

Another angel protests, “He is in mourning, brother-”

“It is only the remorse of a killer. Dean Winchester. Stand up.” The angel waits, but quickly loses patience. “Stand the fuck up!”

“We could give him just a few moments-”

“You speak out of turn, Anael! How can we show sympathy when he has murdered one of our own? There is no Heaven for angels. His Grace is destroyed and we will never be with him again. That thought alone should make you want justice as much as I do. Let my brother go, Winchester, and look at me!”

His head feels heavy and it’s difficult for him to lift it.

“I said, LOOK AT ME!” the angel says thunderously.

“He is blind, brother!”

“Back, Anael!”

The angel persists. “There was a prophecy-”

“Ah, yes. The righteous man. A weapon of God, who cut down one of His soldiers. Humans are made so weak by fear, and angels by their duty. Well. We will deal with you and the prophecy will be discarded. Not all trees bear fruit, after all.”

A foot presses into Dean’s neck so he is forced to lower his head.

“The gateway closed! He fulfilled the prophecy by taking Castiel’s life!”

“Brother, these others are waking.”

“Put them into a deeper sleep,” Anael orders.

“No! Let them be blinded. I call it justice.”

The angels laughs and Dean murmurs, “This is wrong.”

Getting his vision back suddenly is a shock. The lights are too bright, setting off the red of a woman’s hair. She’s wearing a leather jacket and has a thumb hooked in the pocket of her jeans. “Hi.”

He waves a hand in her direction and sits down, rubbing his face.

“I’m Anna. I guess you don’t remember me.”

“What happened to Gabriel?”

“Changing of the guard. He’s having a break while I stay here with you.”

“Right.” Dean nods and stares out into the black space.

“Are you okay?”

“Huh?”

She half-smiles at him. “It has to be hard, right? Watching the people you care about die, not being able to do anything about it.”

Dean looks at her for a while before he catches himself. “Hey, come sit with me,” he coaxes and she doesn’t resist. It’s as if they’re sitting side by side in a starry sky.

“You don’t remember me at all, do you?” Anna says in her soft voice. “I mean, you’re not meant to. So it’s good. I just thought that when I saw you again, it...well, it wouldn’t be like this.”

“Yeah? Sorry about that.”

Time passes quietly and nothing changes.

“I watched you with Castiel.”

“Ugh, you saw that?” he asks sheepishly.

“I was surprised. I didn’t think you would be able to kill him.”

“It was the Colt.”

“I’m not talking about the weapon-”

“I know what you meant.”

Anna stares at him long enough to make him uncomfortable. Her knees come up and she hugs them loosely, hair falling across her face. “You kissed him.”

It’s not an accusation but he treats it like one. “It was a mistake.”

“More than once.”

“Those were different lives. Different people. Not me.”

“You don’t know yourself very well, Dean.”

He can’t argue with her and doesn’t really want to, so they sit in silence.

“He’s your best friend.”

“Are we dating?” he asks suddenly. “You and me, not me and... I’m sorry if we aren’t, I just... I’m sorry if we are, too. Though I don’t really think it would be me that’s cheating-”

For some reason she’s smiling at him. “I’m not your girlfriend.”

“Oh. Are you close?”

“Maybe a year ago.”

“I’m just knocking it out of the park today, aren’t I?”

Anna pushes her hair behind her ear. “Do you think you could love Castiel?”

“Have you put any bets down?”

“Not about this.”

He considers the question. “Honestly? I think I either love him already, or I never will.”

“He’s my brother, you know,” she says with her half-smile.

“What?”

“Not my favourite sibling, but we used to be pretty close.”

“God, are all angels related to each other?”

“We like to play happy families up in Heaven. It passes the millennia.”

Dean shakes his head in disbelief. “So. Are you mad at me for killing him?”

“You did what you had to. But Dean, love is a choice.”

“That’s not very romantic.”

“What I’m saying is that you don’t need love to live, but it’s nice to have the company.” Anna touches his arm gently. “You don’t have to sacrifice something before anyone’s even asked you to. I hope you understand that.”

He stands up and walks over to a light. “I just want to get out of here.”

“Good luck.”

The light get brighter as his hands close in on it. 

At the last possible moment he says, “Thanks.”

* * *

**THE NEXT BEST THING**

A hand is stroking his forehead, pushing back his hair. He opens his eyes slowly, smiling before he even sees who it belongs to. Tessa smiles back and leans in for a kiss. His fingers curl around her elbows as he enjoys her body’s warmth.

“It’s five o’clock.”

“Oh,” he says and closes his eyes again.

She laughs. “In the afternoon! I think you know that. And that you’re lying on my couch-”

Dean opens his eyes to tell her seriously, “You know, we made the right choice. This couch is ridiculously comfortable.”

“And,” she interrupts him laughingly, hand moving down to his chest. “And, that we made plans at the Roadhouse tonight.”

“Can’t we just stay in?” He pulls her in closer and goes for a persuasive kiss.

“With Cas and Sarah.”

“Oh. Ohh! That was tonight?”

Tess scrunches up her nose, still smiling affectionately at him. “You’re always so weird right after you wake up.”

“It’s the couch. I’m going to have a shower.”

“I wish you were this enthusiastic about seeing my friends!” she calls after him as he runs up the stairs.

It takes him a full ten minutes to decide whether or not to wash his hair – he doesn’t want to look like he’s trying too hard, after all. Then there’s picking out a shirt that is casual but not lazy. Cas doesn’t share his taste in music so he pulls on a plain white tee and a flannel overshirt. It’s like this every time they meet up, though Dean has rightly been accused of laziness when getting ready for dates with his actual girlfriend. Sam gives him crap sometimes about having a man-crush.

When he comes downstairs Tessa does something to his hair and smiles. “You smell really good.”

He loops an arm around her waist, kisses her, then tugs her out the front door. “Don’t wanna be late.”

Dean lets his girlfriend choose the music they listen to when they’re sitting together in the Impala, just because he likes to hear her singing quietly along to it or playing out the beat on the dashboard. It’s endearing because she doesn’t seem to notice she’s doing it most of the time. They’re listening to her soft rock and she goes quiet, which means she’s about to talk.

“God, I haven’t seen Sarah in ages.”

The sun’s setting, an orange sky and rays of warm light bouncing off the silver on the car.

“Yeah. What’s it been, a month?”

“She called me last week but that was just for work. I’m glad we decided to catch up with them.”

“Me too,” Dean murmurs.

Halfway into the next song Tessa speaks again.

“We didn’t make it to their housewarming. Do you think we should have gotten them a gift?”

“Nah.” He smiles at her, shrugging. “Cas isn’t into that. I bought him a plant once in college and he didn’t know what to do with himself.”

“Oh? What kind of plant?”

She laughs when he waves his hand around noncommittally. “It had...leaves...”

“That does sound like a plant.”

The song finishes up with a guitar riff Dean actually sort of likes.

“I bet it was green, too.”

He chuckles as they pull up into the parking lot at the Roadhouse. When the car’s stopped he puts his arm over the back of the passenger seat and leans in close. “Yeah, it had...green...”

“Leaves,” she offers with a teasing smile.

“Yeah, green leaves.”

“Like a plant.” 

He’s almost close enough to kiss her now, but they keep talking and he keeps inching in, the handbrake digging into his side and their smiles getting wider. “Exactly.” 

“Like your normal, garden-variety plant.”

“Yeah, I gave him a plant,” he says and kisses her. It’s soft, sweet and gentle.

The thing about Tessa is that they’re always laughing when they’re together. He loves spending time with her, loves her, loves that they’ve been dating long enough to feel this comfortable. She never asks him about the stuff that he can’t talk about, just waits for him to come to her about it. Trusts him enough to believe that he will. It’s exactly what he always wanted in a relationship.

They step out of the car and he puts an arm around her shoulders as they walk into the bar. There’s the clinking of pool balls and cheering at a game that’s playing on a small TV in the corner. Glasses are filled, chairs are pushed around, people are talking easily to each other. In the middle of it all is Cas, sitting at the counter with Sarah and nursing a bottle of beer.

Sarah sees them first and gets up to hug Tessa. “Hey! It’s great to see you guys!”

“Yeah, it’s been a while!”

“Hey, Dean. How’s the business?” They don’t know each other well enough to hug but Sarah’s nothing less than friendly.

“Doing great, thanks for asking.” Dean smiles at her and eyes the seat next to Cas, taking it when Tessa surreptitiously nudges him. The girls are good friends and they talk about the haircuts they’ve gotten or something else he wouldn’t notice if it wasn’t pointed out to him. “Hey, man.”

“Dean,” Cas says, clearly happy to see him.

“What’re you drinking?”

He looks at the bottle like he isn’t sure, tilting it without trying to read the label. “Beer.”

Dean snorts and signals to Ash behind the bar. “Helpful. So.”

“Yes, Dean?”

“Been a while.”

“Yes.”

Then they just sit and smile at each other for a minute, until Sarah and Tessa start talking loudly about how emotionally stunted men can be. In retaliation Dean leans in close to Cas, who automatically does the same, and starts on a longwinded rant about baseball and the regulations which cost his team a loss last season. None of which Cas understands, of course, but he nods and smiles like he knows Dean wants him to. The girls throw their hands up in the air and complain overdramatically about the national pastime, but now that they’re sure that their boyfriends are talking they sit down on Cas’ side and order their own drinks.

A beer comes for Dean and he takes a swig from it. “I like your...”

Cas somehow understands his vague gesturing, pulling at the front of his shirt and looking down at it. “Oh. Yes. Sarah likes the colour.”

“Dude, you’re turning into one of those guys!”

He frowns at him. “No, I simply wear it out of affection for her.”

“Yeah, I didn’t mean it that way.” Dean looks at the shirt again. “It’s...nice.”

And they’re back to smiling. “Thank you.”

It’s still light outside and there aren’t many people at the Roadhouse. Ash is making a surprisingly well-received attempt at flirting with Bela Talbot, ignoring a guy’s drink order. Ellen must be out tonight not to be keeping a close eye on him. Gordon Walker is waiting with an unimpressed expression for someone to challenge him to a game of darts. Adam is drinking himself stupid with his college friends and Hope and Wes, sitting nearby, are on an awkward blind date.

“I was telling Tess about that time in college when I gave you that plant...”

“Oh?” Cas frowns at the memory. “I was not a very responsible owner.”

“It died?”

He got it for him years ago, as a ‘welcome to this side of the state line’ present when they’d been sharing a dorm for a couple of weeks. When he asked Sam what he should get a ‘weird and sort of quiet guy’, he hadn’t realised that ‘something he can nurture’ was the kid’s idea of a joke. Remembering all that and the damage he did to his mom’s garden, Dean shouldn’t feel disappointed to hear that the plant is dead. But he kind of does.

“No, when I realised that it wasn’t healthy I asked my sister for advice. We planted it in her back garden. I believe it is growing well there.”

“In Kansas City?”

Cas nods and takes a sip from his bottle. “Her husband doesn’t like it.”

“He has bad taste.”

“Yes.”

Suddenly Sarah and Tessa start laughing and singing along to the song one of Adam’s buddies has chosen on the jukebox. When Dean looks back to Cas he finds those intense blue eyes on him. It’s hard to keep eye contact but harder to look away, so he stares helplessly back, feeling like a puzzle that Cas is about to solve, completely vulnerable but also empowered by the knowledge that he has Cas’ undivided attention, at least for these short minutes.

Then Cas smiles and he’s confused and Ash sets down another two beers, saying “On the house,” and something about having a date with Bela next week.

“How is Sam?”

“Sam? Good, yeah, he’s good. Got an internship at a law firm in the city.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

The beers disappear and the girls leave them to play a game of darts. They sit quietly, not feeling pressured to talk about anything, just enjoying each other’s physical company.

They’ve been friends since their first year at college, plant incident and all. By now there’s nothing new for them to say and they wouldn’t need to voice it anyway. It’s the rhythm of old friendship that picks up again no matter how long it’s been since they’ve last spent time together. They drink beers and kiss their girlfriends and ask after family.

They don’t talk about the time when they got drunk and made out and Dean woke up next to Cas with his shirt half-off. They pretend they don’t remember that.

As the hours pass more people come in through the door, letting in the cool night air. He notices Cas toying with the sleeve of his trench coat which is over the back of his chair. He gets cold easily and Dean is about to tell him to just put it on.

Instead he stares at the coat with an odd feeling of recognition. Cas has owned it since before Dean met him and stubbornly worn it no matter how faded it gets or unfashionable it is. He has a thousand memories of him wearing it, in sunshine, rain, inside, outdoors, over jeans, over a suit, over nothing after that time he played poker when Dean wasn’t around.

He sees it in a thousand places, a thousand ways, then there are more somehow. Torn up, covered in blood, dirtied, disappearing. The sounds of the bar fade out as he stares at the trench coat.

“Dean.”

One word from Cas brings it all back. Glasses clinking, people talking, darts and pool cues. Cas is looking at him with question and concern in his eyes.

“Yeah, I...”

He’s seen that expression before on his best friend’s face. After a breakup, hung-over, sick, injured, remembering how his parents died, worrying about Sam, fighting depression before he even knew that was what he could call it.

In motel rooms, under street lights, when he was drawing patterns on the floor in his own blood and trying not to pass out until Cas came for him.

“Cas,” he breathes.

He doesn’t realise that he’s leaning closer. He grips onto the front of Cas’ shirt, the one that Sarah likes, fingers winding into the fabric and partly underneath it, past the buttons. Cas’ hand comes up to his shoulder to push at him gently. Just like that, everything comes back.

“Oh, shit.”

“Dean?”

“Sorry, Cas,” is all he can manage before the words force their way out of him, “This isn’t right,” and the bar and his best friend swirl away into smoke.

Anna and Gabriel are there, speaking in hushed tones. For a moment he ignores them so he can take off his shirt and push back the collar of the t-shirt underneath. There’s a hand-shaped scar, clear and large. “What the hell is this?”

“A transdimensional love bite,” Gabriel says with no more than a glance in Dean’s direction.

There’s a sound that’s something between a whip cracking and thunder. The black space shifts and there are walls, ceiling and floor, shining like mirrors that reflect the lights endlessly. A corner of the room breaks inwards and suddenly the angels are standing there, pushing back whoever’s fighting to get in. They’re speaking over each other and Dean can’t make out the words, until, “DEAN!”

“Sam?”

“We’re going to-”

In a flash of light they’re gone and Dean’s standing alone in the indeterminable blackness. 

Anna comes back a minute later.

“That was-”

“The real Sam Winchester, yes. Castiel must have found a way to bring him here.”

“Cas was with him?” he says, surprised.

She puts her hands in the pockets of the leather jacket she’s wearing. “I can’t let you see them, Dean. I don’t have the clearance.”

“Anna-”

“The only way for you to get out of here is to do what Gabriel said. Otherwise you are never getting your memories back.”

“But I-”

“They’re waiting for you. Out there. They know what all of this is about.”

“So what, they’re-”

“‘They’re’ nothing! This is about you, Dean!” Anna actually shouts at him. “This was never meant to be permanent. For your own sake, don’t make this last longer than it has to.”

But before he can take hold of the next light, she stops him with a hand on his arm.

“And, Dean. Um. They’ll be watching your progress. Good luck.”

Everything goes white.

* * *

**KEEP CALM AND PLAY ANGRY BIRDS**

Dean Smith finds himself on the floor of an elevator with a really bad headache and wrinkles in his suit. As he groans and feels around for his briefcase, his fingers slide over cool metal. A panel has fallen from the ceiling and knocked him out for what he hopes has only been a few minutes.

He takes out his phone to check the time and see if there are any new work-relevant emails to respond to, but there’s no signal. The buttons aren’t lit up like normal. When he tries them, nothing happens.

“Shit,” he says and presses the red emergency button. Then he presses it another three times so that the maintenance staff will come and rescue him faster.

As an afterthought he jams his fingers in between the doors and tries to manually open them. It doesn’t work but if he’s lucky that’s set off some kind of alarm. He wedges the handle of his briefcase in there as a makeshift crowbar. Then he kicks the door. Nothing happens.

“Fuck,” he says and loosens his tie. He shrugs off his suit jacket and folds it neatly, setting it down in the corner along with the propped-up metal ceiling panel.

There still isn’t any reception in here. Stubbornly, he calls the first number in his contacts list. It doesn’t go through.

“Damn,” he says and sits down cross-legged on the elevator floor.

When he runs his hand through his hair in a gesture of mild frustration, his fingers come away with blood on them. He stares at it, then rubs his hand over his head, checking it, rubbing again, checking again, until he’s completely satisfied that yes, that is blood and yes, he is bleeding. The panel must have fallen pretty heavily. After he gets out he’ll get himself checked out at a hospital. For now the best he can do is take some of the Panadol he carries around with him and try not to be concussed. Or something.

He loosens his tie some more and undoes the top buttons of his shirt.

Playing Snake on his phone gets boring very quickly and it’s only when he looks away from the small screen that he notices the emergency phone that’s set into the elevator wall. He opens up the panel, takes out the red corded handset, ignores the written instructions and waits for the dial tone. Nothing happens.

“Fudge,” he says and puts the phone back on the hook.

Angry Birds isn’t as good as Snake because it doesn’t make narrative sense, and he won’t read the instructions so he has no idea how to destroy the buildings in exactly the right way. When he’s done with it Dean gets started on the paperwork he was going to take home with him. When he’s done with that, and looking through the photos on his phone, and checking old emails, and trying to see what he looks like in the slightly reflective surface of the metal panel, he decides to pray.

“Oh God, up there in Heaven, the boss of...I guess everything, send someone to check on the elevator soon, ‘cause I’m starting to get hungry. Thanks. Uh...please.”

Then he puts the jacket over his lap and tries to brush out the creases, until there’s knocking on the elevator doors and the muffled sound of someone saying, “Hey, is anyone in here?”

“Hi! Yes, I’m in here, could you-”

“Step back into the elevator, I’m gonna try to open the doors.”

“I couldn’t-” Dean watches as the doors jolt away from each other, stopping so there’s a gap wide enough for him to squeeze through. “Oh, okay, great.”

There’s a man standing outside of the elevator, wearing the company uniform. “Are you okay?”

“Hungry, actually. If it’s eight o’clock already I gotta get home and drink some wheatgrass.”

“Sir, is your head...” He gestures at him with a concerned expression.

“Bloody. Yeah. Take my briefcase. Ceiling panel. Better if we leave that here. Will the doors close?”

“I’ll hold them open for you, sir.”

“Dean Smith,” he introduces himself with his business smile.

The man grins at him. “I know. I’m tech support staff. I’ve seen you around the building.”

“Yeah? Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

It’s just politeness. He’s not planning on remembering the name, once he’s emailed it to his personal assistant and asked her to leave a hamper on the guy’s desk or something else the lower-downs might appreciate. He’ll leave what it is up to her.

“Sam Wesson. Lean on me, when you can.”

“Wesson?” Dean stops, still in the elevator. That isn’t...that’s not... “This isn’t right.”

So it all disappears and he tries again.

* * *

**NIGHTMARES II**

He feels sick. Like at any second he could throw up. But it’s just a feeling, one that won’t go away. His grief won’t leave him alone. He walks around remembering, suddenly, _Cas is dead. He is dead. You will never see him again._ He’ll think, sometimes, about gravestones and what Cas’ will look like. Remember what hugging him was like. Nothing means anything anymore. Except, _Cas is dead and he is never coming back. You get to mourn him and that’s it now._

Sam found him in the middle of the night, back against the wall and crying. He can’t really remember it. It doesn’t feel like it was real, even Sam pulling him close and telling him it would all be okay. Sam saying that he’s worried about Dean not getting any sleep, or eating, the way he zones out in the middle of a conversation. Fuck. It’s so hard to care about anything. It’s just feeling sick and gasping for air and remembering and trying so fucking hard to keep going.

He hasn’t left his house since he got the phone call.

Dad yells at him and then tells him Cas wouldn’t want this, but Dean doesn’t give a shit because Cas isn’t here to say any of it himself. It doesn’t mean anything. There’s just absence, like he wasn’t anything before they were friends and now that he’s dead Dean is barely there. He thinks about killing himself but he doesn’t want to die. He just wants it all to go away. Or Cas to come back. He wishes, God, he wishes so much that that were possible.

He gets a phone call from Cas’ mother, who accuses him of being selfish and then starts crying. After a while Dean hangs up. Maybe later they can talk about this. Maybe at the funeral. Fuck, he wants to stop existing, wants for none of this to be real. It hurts too much, this numbness, this deep ache, this sickness in his stomach and emptiness in his lungs. He wants to be violent but instead he curls into himself and tries to forget about his life. The curtains only open when Sam forces himself into Dean’s space.

They go out to eat one day, at a place near where Sam works. It’s not lunch hour so it’s just them and a guy sitting over there with a newspaper. Dean orders a burger and fries but neither of them really expect him to eat it. When it arrives he’s suddenly hungrier than he’s even been in his life, like his body thinks it can fill the void with food, so he crams it all into his mouth, ignoring the way Sam is watching him, with worry and incredulity, and the headache he’s had for the last hour.

“I just don’t think that you’re okay,” his little brother tells him.

“I’m not. We both know I’m not. I don’t think anyone could be, if their best friend had just...” He can feel tears starting in his eyes and maybe he’d feel embarrassed about that if he wasn’t so painfully numb. The words spill out of him, honest enough that he knows Sam isn’t going to understand. “Everyone’s lost someone. But this is...it’s like he hurt me. I don’t know why he did it, you know? I feel betrayed, and it’s like, it’s my fault, because I didn’t stop him, and I fucking knew, I fucking knew, Sam, that things weren’t alright with him...”

Sam waits until he’s sure that Dean won’t say anything more before he speaks. “You know it’s not your fault-”

“I know! But it feels like...” Dean wipes at his eyes and face with both of his hands. “He left me a fucking suicide note. I saw it. He said, ‘goodbye’. He never fucking says that, Sam. Do you understand? I should have... That’s why they leave notes, isn’t it? So people will find them and stop them?”

“You can’t have known-”

“But I did know! I mean, I know now. I can look back on everything and see that, yeah, he was thinking about it even then. I could have stopped him if I’d realised...”

Then he starts crying and Sam has absolutely no idea what to do while they’re sitting in a restaurant with only a couple of napkins and a shared history of emotional repression.

When he tries to convince Sam to bring him some alcohol later, his brother refuses and also won’t go home, watching TV downstairs and checking on him every hour or so until Dean has to pretend to be asleep just to get the guy to leave him alone. That’s almost enough for him to actually fall asleep, but he stops himself, too scared of what he might see in his subconscious. Nightmares would be bad but dreams about Cas would be worse, so he stays awake for as long as he can, getting a few dreamless hours every other day with Sam watching Seinfeld in the living room.

_Cas is dead and you don’t have him. Nobody has him anymore. He’s dead and he killed himself. You’re gonna have to live with that. Live with your own failure. Live with the loneliness. Live without Cas. Your best friend. Who is dead and you are still alive._

Mom was on a plane when everything happened and she only hears about it days later when Sam asks her for help with Dean, who immediately gets a phone call and breaks down again, sitting in the corner of his room where he can’t see anything that Cas touched, listening to his mom telling him she loves him and that grief is difficult but that people who die don’t mean to make it harder on the people they leave behind. He stops making sense and that stops being important, as he listens to Mary with the sounds of a public bathroom in the background, saying over and over again that she’s here for him and she’ll be home as soon as she can and telling him about the people she’s lost.

He takes too-long showers and throws away all the tablets that he can find. Even vitamins. He bags them up and throws them out the second-floor window, aiming at where the trash cans are standing.

In a moment of what he thinks might be genuine insanity, he calls Cas’ mother and tells her that he’s sorry. She asks if he’s drunk. He tells her that he’s sorry he’s not. That he’s calling her because he has to. That he’s so, so sorry that Cas is dead and that he didn’t take care of him.

She asks him how he didn’t notice that Cas was depressed if they were in a relationship. He tells her that they weren’t. After a moment of silence she tells him that she thought they were dating since the year after college. He tells her that he’s sorry again. She forgives him.

He texts Sam, ‘thanks xx’ and gets a call from him less than a minute later. Sam’s running out to his car and telling him not to do anything until he gets there. For the first time in a week Dean laughs as he tries to convince his brother than he isn’t going to commit suicide. Cas’ note wasn’t anything like that text, he thinks. Then he tries not to think about it.

Mom gets back and stays in his guest room, making him good food even though he doesn’t eat most of the time. They watch late-night TV together and drink wine until Dean has passed out.

He gets a call from Cas’ mother telling him when the funeral is on.

It’s a Saturday as he stands there, in a stupid fucking suit, flowers in his hand. People say shit he doesn’t listen to. When it’s over he hugs Cas’ mom, who tells him to call her Amelia, and maybe they talk too long after everyone else has left about the things they remember and everything they regret, but they need to do it and no one stops them. Cas’ dad is long dead and his siblings live out of state. Maybe he’s dead because there weren’t enough people to love him.

Dean stares at the letters of his best friend’s name. _Castiel James Novak. As long as life and memory last, we will remember thee._

He hates it. All of it. And he misses him.

“This is wrong,” he murmurs as he tosses the flowers onto the ground.

* * *

**HOMEWORK**

The school bell rings loudly. Students are gathering up their books and talking as they walk out of the classroom, when Dean lifts his head from his desk, glancing around and surreptitiously wiping spit from the edge of his mouth. He slings his bag over his shoulder, but is stopped before he can go out into the hallway.

“Don’t think I don’t know when you’re falling asleep in my class, Dean Winchester. If you can’t keep your eyes open when we’re covering the Civil War, I don’t know why you’re still enrolled. History isn’t a core subject for your year level,” the teacher tells him sternly.

“Mrs Harvelle, I’m way interested in muskets and battles and all of that-”

“He just won’t read books without pictures in them,” Bela says as she walks past.

He frowns after her, looking back to find Mrs Harvelle frowning at him. “She wants me.”

“Yeah, right,” Mrs Harvelle smirks and then catches herself. “If you can’t stay awake, Dean, I’m afraid I’ll have to call your parents and tell them about your behaviour in this class-”

“Whoa, whoa, hold on. There’s no need-”

“There’s no need if you can keep yourself awake for an entire period. This isn’t up for question, I was just telling you. Now go on, I know you all want to get home.” She gestures at the door with a good-natured smile.

“See you tomorrow, Mrs H!”

“I don’t get paid enough for the stress you cause me, Winchester!” she calls after him.

He puts his thumb under the strap of his bag and walks confidently through the hallways. Even now when they should be used to him most people give him a second look. Including Bela Talbot, who shrieks with frustration when he blows her a kiss, startling the guy next to her into hitting himself in the head with the door to his locker.

Chuck Shurley runs up alongside him, matching his steps two to one. “Hey, Dean! About that group project, I-”

“I don’t work with partners, Shurley. But if you wanna write it up and put my name on it, go ahead.”

“Really?” The guy actually seems excited about that. “Because I had some great ideas-”

“Awesome. Do that.” Dean waves him off and goes out the main doors. There’s a middle school a few streets over that his little brother attends and it’s his job to walk Sam home every day.

When he gets there Sam’s hanging around outside with a few of his nerdy friends, talking about books or maths or something. He runs up to Dean so that they can head home. “I got my chemistry quiz back today!”

Dean messes up his hair affectionately. “I bet you did great.”

“Ask me what I got on it.”

“Fifty. Out of...seventy-five.”

“No, Dean! Ten out of ten.” Sam rummages around in his bag and holds up an only somewhat creased piece of paper. “Read ‘em and weep.”

“Mom’ll love that.”

Sam tries to smooth out the paper on his bag as they’re walking. “Yeah? Enough to give me money to see a movie later?”

“You got a girlfriend already, Sammy?”

In reply Sam scrunches up his face.

“I think that’s a yes. What’s her name?”

“Nothing.”

“What, her parents didn’t like her enough to give her a decent name? Come on.”

“Jess!” Sam says finally. “She’s awesome and really pretty and you can’t meet her.”

His smile falters at that. “Hey, why not?” 

“She’ll like you too much.”

“What was that, Sammy? Couldn’t hear you just now, you were muttering.”

Sam grins at him and tries to hit him with his bag. “You could too hear me! I’m not saying it again or your head’ll get too big and explode!”

They laugh and tease each other until they get to the house. ‘WINCHEST’ is written along the side of their mailbox, with ‘ER’ underneath it and a small ‘S’ beside that. The Impala is parked under partial cover, as clean today as it is every day, even though their dad drives it to work and back. The curtains are open and Dean can see Mary in the kitchen, putting flowers into a vase.

The screen door clatters after them and Sam rushes in with his quiz. “Mom, Mom, you have to see this!”

“Hi, sweetheart. Just let me put this on the sill.” She leans over so that Dean can kiss her on the cheek before heading upstairs to his room.

It’s only when he’s closed the door and listening to music that he stops being able to hear Sam showing off and their mother congratulating him. He throws his bag onto the bed—there’s nothing useful in there, just a water bottle and some spare asthma medication for Sam—and sits down at his desk, mouthing the words to the lyrics as he opens his biology textbook.

The best way to look like you know what you’re doing, he’s found, is to actually know what you’re doing. Even if he can’t keep himself awake in school he knows what they’re studying. It’s probably Sammy’s influence, but Dean actually does care about getting decent grades. That’s why he refuses to work with a partner on class projects. If anyone found out that he had a good work ethic his image of cool indifference would go straight out the window. 

He writes down notes in an exercise book and taps out the beat with his foot.

* * *

Mom’s gone early to work so they have to settle for the breakfast Dad can make for them, which is basically burnt toast while he slowly pours orange juice into glasses and stares at them, silently daring them to say something about how if Mom wasn’t around they would all starve to death. They make a point of thanking him on their way out, but as soon as they turn a corner Sam is wiping his tongue and Dean jogs over to the convenience store to buy a pack of gum.

After that early morning disaster it’s not so bad to walk into high school, where the faces are friendly and won’t try to offer him overcooked food. They’ve started putting posters up for some end-of-term event that Dean doesn’t care about. Girls are hanging around his locker but he ignores them. If they don’t know him well enough to realise he doesn’t use it, then they’re not worth his time.

Jo gets a smile, though she doesn’t appreciate it. “Sleeping through history? How do you mantain that B average,” she says wryly as she falls into step beside him. “Before you say your charm or good looks or something, just know I’m not falling for it. There’s a substitute for gym today.”

“What happened to Mr Singer? I like that guy.”

“He had an accident. Or his wife’s having a baby, I’m not sure.”

“Yeah?”

They stop at Jo’s locker so she can dump her bag and get her books for first period. “You’re going to love this, too. All the girls are talking about it.”

“Why, what’s up?”

She watches him to gauge his reaction as she piles up books in her crooked arm. “New kid. Came in last week but his parents wanted him to help unpack or something.”

“At this time of year?”

“I thought it was weird too. Meg went over there to say hi to them yesterday afternoon. Word is that before this he was homeschooled.” Jo closes the door and latches the combination lock, spinning the small wheel to make it more secure.

“Where did they move into?” he asks as they walk.

“The Braedens’ old place. But, Dean.” She stops him in front of the bulletin board, where there are announcements of chess championships and posters advertising what he figures is a dance, on in a couple of weeks. “This is important. He’s in your year.”

“And?”

“Taking history.”

“So?”

“He’s _handsome_ ,” Jo stands close to him to whisper. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but Meg says she got a look at him and he had blue eyes...dark hair...you know?”

“God, Jo, do we have to discuss this in the fucking hallway? I’ve got an image to keep up, here. There are girls lining up to ask me to this stupid dance thing,” he hisses.

“You know I’m cool with it? Really. We don’t talk about it like, ever, but I couldn’t care less if you’re dating lines of girls or asking out the handsome new guy before he hears about your one hundred per cent hetero sport-playing car-loving reputation-”

Dean tries putting a hand over her mouth. All that gets him is a reprimanding look from a passing teacher, so he removes it before that turns into detention.

“You don’t think your dad will be okay with it.”

“Jo...”

“The bell’s about to go.”

The school bell rings and she smiles smugly. Then she leans in to kiss him on the cheek, whispering in his ear, “I’ll love you either way.” 

“I’ll see you at lunch, Jo.”

“Bring the new kid with you.” She waves goodbye over her shoulder.

It’s an ordinary day, except that he gets caught chewing gum by the vice-principal and has to sweet-talk his way out of punishment by telling the story of breakfast that morning and how he can still taste burnt toast at the back of his mouth. The substitute gym teacher completely ignores that they’re meant to be doing theory in their midday period and sends them running around the lawn.

Dean didn’t bring a spare shirt, so at lunch he puts it under a tap and walks into history dripping water on the floor. If he thinks about it, he probably could have made it home and back before the bell, but he can’t sneak out now without Mrs Harvelle calling his parents on the basis of apparent delinquency.

She follows the trail of water with her eyes until it ends at him. “Dean Winchester. Please come up here.”

There’s whispering and muffled laughter as he walks to the front of the room.

“Sorry about this, Mrs Harvelle. Now, my jacket’s dry, so I can take off the shirt and just wear that if you think that’d be better-”

“It’s fine. Just this crazy summer weather, I’d say.”

The teenagers sitting at their desks are laughing loudly now, as if once the teacher makes a joke they have permission to find this funny.

“Just stand there for a minute, Winchester. I’d rather have you dripping all in one place. Hello, everyone. I know it’s late in the term but we have a new student today. Come in and we’ll introduce you.” Mrs Harvelle waves at the door and a boy comes in, looking uncomfortable. 

He is handsome for his age, with dark hair and bright blue eyes, but he’s made the unfortunate fashion choice of an oversized tan trench coat. Dean can’t make out the shape of his body underneath it, though he and many of the girls in the class are trying.

“This is Castiel Novak-Milton. Sorry, did I say that correctly?”

The boy only nods, following the water trail to the desk and back to Dean with bewilderment.

“He’s moved here with his family from Denver. I want you all to look out for him while he’s getting settled in, but I’ve called Mr Winchester up to the front of the room to be Castiel’s special guide around the school. You can start right now by showing him where the bathrooms are. Go and get some of the water out of your shirt. I expect you back in fifteen minutes, if not less.”

As much as Dean wants to protest, he knows better than to argue with Mrs Harvelle and make an idiot of himself in front of everyone in his class. Bela’s sitting in the second row with her arms crossed, her expression somewhere between jealousy and irritation. He winks at her as he ushers the new guy out of the classroom.

“So. Castiel.”

“Castiel,” the boy corrects in a low, almost rasping voice.

“Castiel?”

“No, Castiel.”

“I’m just gonna call you Cas,” he decides, stretching him arms out over his head. The shirt sticks to his chest and he pulls at it only for it to stick again. “Come on, I’ll show you where the toilets are. Don’t think Mrs Harvelle is weird or anything. This is just her trying to be helpful.”

The boy just nods.

It’s cooler out here. Water is soaking into the hem of his jeans and he wishes he brought his jacket instead of leaving it with his bag. Fortunately it’s not much of a walk, just further along an adjoining hallway and there’s no one around since class has already started.

“This is it. You can wait outside if you want. There’s nothing much to see-”

Castiel goes past him into the men’s toilets without saying a word.

He doesn’t say a word even when Dean is stripping is shirt off and twisting it over the sink, annoyingly conscious that he’s half naked in front of the good-looking new guy that both his best friend and his best friend’s mother, who happens to be their history teacher, want him to make the moves on. There’s a breeze coming in through the high windows and the cold is making hairs stand on end.

“What’s your name?” the boy asks him.

“Huh? Oh, Dean. Winchester. My dad works at the garage over on 27th Street. Maybe you’ll meet him there sometime.”

“My family does not own a car.”

That’s about the weirdest thing he’s ever heard. Dean keeps his mouth shut and wrings more water out of the shirt.

“What?”

“Nothing! I didn’t say anything.”

“You looked as though you wanted to say something.”

“Alright, I... How do you not have a car? If your dad’s not into it or you can’t afford one, whatever, but you could afford to move here. How are your parents going to get to work?”

“Neither of my parents work,” the boy tells him calmly.

“So they haven’t gotten jobs here yet?”

“My family is wealthy.” He smiles a little when that gets Dean’s attention. “We don’t see the need for a car. Though we do have a piano.”

Dean twists the shirt tightly enough for his fingers to go white. Then he spreads out the material to see if it drips and is satisfied when it doesn’t. He pulls the damp shirt over his head and tries not to shiver when it rests over his skin. The material is lined, but it was only water. When he gets home he’ll throw it on the laundry pile and hope the print on the front hasn’t cracked too badly.

They go out into the sun and sit on the front steps. He’s pleased when Castiel follows him without question, seemingly more interested in staring at everything than wondering why they aren’t heading back to class right away.

“How’d you get the name?” Dean asks, scuffing his shoe on a step.

“I’m named after an angel.”

“Which one?”

“The angel of Thursday, of solitude and tears, said to preside over the deaths of kings,” Castiel answers as if he is reciting something. “I was born on a Thursday so they named me after him.”

“Huh. Seen any kings die before?”

“No.” 

His voice is cold and Dean wonders if he’s done anything wrong.

Back in the classroom they’re seated apart from each other. Dean shrugs on his jacket and prepares to get some sleep before his English test, but stops when Mrs Harvelle tells them all that, “There are going to be presentations on something that we’ve covered this term, due in two weeks. I want you working in the pairs that I’ve assigned. Anyone who doesn’t do this piece of assessment work will get their average knocked down a letter and essays to write until your misery stops being enjoyable to me. Is that clear?”

Which is how Dean Winchester finds himself with an angel for a partner on a history project.

“How was the new kid?” Jo asks him later when they’re standing at her locker.

It’s the end of the day and the hallways are crowded with students who want to escape as quickly as they can. Locker doors slam. People laugh loudly or complain to each other about their homework. It’s an ordinary day, up until Castiel suddenly appears out of nowhere.

“Cas!”

“Cas?” says Jo.

“Castiel,” the boy corrects her.

“Castiel?”

“Yes.” As if that was a completely normal conversation to have, he turns to Dean. “Where do you live? I would like to go home with you today to work on our presentation.”

Jo grins widely. “You’re partners. For a presentation.”

“Look, man, I don’t do group projects. Just do it on your own and Mrs Harvelle’ll bust me for it later.”

“But Dean, he wants to go home with you!”

Confused, Castiel tilts his head. “Was that not a normal expression?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dean says coolly while trying to signal with his eyes for Jo to shut up.

“You’ll be good for him. The Winchesters live at 228 Milligan Drive-”

He puts his hand over her mouth and closes the locker door for her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jo. Cas, just forget about the assignment. I’m not doing it with you.”

Jo says something that’s muffled by the palm of his hand.

“Mrs Harvelle told us to work together.”

“You don’t listen to everything your teacher tells you to do. Or maybe you do. Whatever. I’m not going to do it so it’s better if you just don’t waste your time-”

“You’re not a waste of time.” 

Jo pushes his hand away so she can laugh. “This is perfect. No, this is perfect. You have to do the project with him. Please, Dean? For me, for you?”

Instead of accepting he waves at them and walks off down the hallway, unsettled and a little pissed off. Probably because Jo knows he’s not okay with this and keeps trying to push him into it. Maybe because he’s already feeling bad about letting Castiel down with the presentation.

A couple of blocks away it becomes clear that Castiel is following him home.

“Are you lost?”

“No.”

He walks backwards to tell him, “I’m picking my little brother up from school.”

The other boy nods.

When they get to the middle school Sam jumps around Castiel with his usual unreserved excitement. He’s interested in Castiel’s name and they talk about his siblings, who were named after the better-known angels like Michael and Gabriel. It turns out the Novak-Miltons are devout Christians, including Castiel himself, though he worries about his eldest brother who hasn’t been heard to pray since he moved out of the family home two years ago. That gets Sam asking about his beliefs. Dean is surprised to hear that not only does the guy actually believe in angels, but he’s grateful for the name his parents gave him.

“The angel of Thursday is said to have great purpose. By some accounts he commanded the armies of Heaven after his brothers despaired and fell into the burning fires of Hell. He remained faithful to the Father even when his loyalty was tested. I want to be like that.”

It’s more words than Castiel has ever said to Dean and that inexplicably annoys him.

“That’s really cool. Me and Dean are named after our grandparents. They owned a supply store.” Sam scrunches up his face.

“Just ‘cause they didn’t fight demons doesn’t mean they weren’t good people,” he says gruffly.

“Your brother is right.”

As he turns the house key he looks over his shoulder. Castiel is smiling at him, which surprises Dean so much that he stumbles through the opening door. “Shit,” he says under his breath and dumps his bag on the floor as coolly as he can with Sam laughing at him.

The TV’s on in the living room and his dad comes out to say hello. When he sees Castiel standing there he smiles, but it looks forced. “So, who’s this?”

“This is Cassie. He’s new at school and we’re meant to be working together on a history project.”

“Sir.” Castiel puts out his hand for John to shake, who just looks at it, then his face, then his hand, like he’s not sure whether to laugh or be impressed. They shake hands and Dean tugs him up the stairs so they can escape to his room.

The door shuts.

“What was that?”

“I was being polite.”

Those blue eyes wander over everything in Dean’s room; the posters, the orderly desk, the discarded clothing on the floor, his old guitar propped up next to his expansive CD collection. They linger on the messed-up bed sheets and the paintings on the corner of a window, birds and clouds that Dean painted with his mom when he was a little kid.

Dean’s face feels hot and he frowns at the corner.

“Which topic would you like to cover?”

“Dude, there’s no way I’m doing this presentation with you. I don’t...” he trails off when Castiel looks closely at the books on his desk, nudging them aside so he can see their titles. _Intermediate Biology. The English Language: Edition for Schools. SAT Preparation. The American Civil War and its Effects._ “I’m not... This isn’t happening.”

“You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about putting effort into your schoolwork.”

As a knee-jerk reaction, Dean chooses a CD and puts it into the player. Castiel has settled on his bed with one of the thicker textbooks. Before Dean can tell him yet again that he’s not interested in doing the project, or to leave his stuff alone, or to go, Castiel’s eyes come up, breathtaking in the sunlight from the window. There’s satisfaction in them, like he knows he’s already won.

He doesn’t say anything when Dean sits next to him on the bed and they talk for hours about the project, what there is to do in the city, the foods and music they both like. By the time Castiel leaves they’re almost sort of friends. 

Nothing’s happened but it feels like everything has changed.

* * *

Bela walks up to him with a determined expression and trails her fingers up his arm. “Go to the dance with me.”

“Oh, wow. You know I’m not into you.”

“You have to be. Everyone’s interested in me. Dean, look at me, I’m way prettier than that Harvelle girl. Is it her? Are you going to the dance with her?”

“Whether I’m going to the dance with her or not, I’m definitely not going with you.” He smiles too brightly at her and heads over to a water fountain.

She follows him persistently. “It’s just one night!”

“Then you can go with anyone.”

“You’re more attractive than all of those other boys. And you’re gentlemanly, you don’t stare like an idiot at my chest. Please, I want to go to this dance and have fun,” she says honestly. “And...impress everyone by having a really hot date.”

Dean smiles up at her and drinks from the lukewarm stream of water.

“I know we’re mean to each other, but it’s based on mutual respect and attraction-”

He straightens up, hiding his smile behind his hand. “You think we’d be good together.”

“Yes! If you’re really going out with Harvelle, that’s fine and I’ll leave the two of you alone. But everyone thinks you’re just close friends. Brother and sister.”

He nods. That sounds about right.

“Great, so you’ll pick me up at seven?” she says hopefully.

“No. I already told you, even if I end up going to the dance it won’t be with you as my date. How about taking another look at Adam? He’s a nice enough guy-”

“I think he’s gay. No one wants to go on a date with someone who’s just using it to prove that they’re interested in the right gender.” Bela frowns and shakes her head. “Whatever. Maybe I’ll try asking out the new guy. What’s his name?”

“Castiel.”

“Castiel?”

“I don’t know how to pronounce it,” he admits.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Have you heard that he’s rich? I mean, richer than me. Ruby says that they have four cars, and one of them is a convertible-”

Dean laughs until she gets angry at him and stomps away.

Aside from a video in biology of various animals giving birth, class isn’t worth staying awake for. He doesn’t see Jo or Castiel except in passing, until the end of the day when he’s loitering on the steps and Castiel comes up behind him. “Jesus Christ!”

“Please refrain from taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

“You freaked me out.”

“You weren’t paying attention.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Are you coming over today?”

“If that is acceptable.”

They head down the steps together.

“Gum?” Dean offers him the half-finished pack.

“No, thank you.”

“You know you sound like a robot, man.”

“I doubt you have ever met a robot.”

“Was that a joke? Did you just make a joke?” He whistles and Castiel smiles shyly at him.

When they get to the middle school Sam is sitting up on a wall typing a message out on his phone. Jess gave him her number today and they’re texting each other things like:  
_how was your last class?_

_chemistrys rly boring :)_  
_i could help you with it if you want_  
_rly?? thx sam youre the best!_  
_:)_  
_:) xxxxx_

He walks slowly behind them, staring at the screen of the phone with intense concentration.

“Are your parents okay with you coming over again?”

“They trust my judgment.”

Dean pushes the strap of his bag further up his shoulder and smiles. “Yeah, I can’t really see you getting crazy drunk at parties.”

“Is that something that you do?”

It would be an easy thing to lie and have Castiel approve of him, but he goes with honesty. “Sometimes. When my parents are working late and Sam’s not around to hear about it.”

“Bitch,” Sam calls without looking up from his phone.

“Jerk,” he says easily back and can’t stop himself from laughing at Castiel’s expression.

“Mom wants us to buy some milk. Do you have any money?”

There are a few crumpled bills pushed down into his bag, so they stop at the convenience store near their house and buy a gallon of full cream. While he’s waiting for Jess to text him back Sam bugs Dean for some Jolly Ranchers. He can’t say no to his little brother and they end up sitting on the curb sharing around a bag of candy, with the milk between them and the sky going slowly dark overhead. The house is only two streets over but they’re enjoying the fresh air and easy company.

“How do you pray?” Dean asks out of nowhere.

He and Castiel stare at each other, green on blue, with wrappers crinkling in the background.

“Silently.”

“Can he hear you that way?”

“Prayer is a different experience for everyone. It’s common to bow your head and clasp your hands, like this.” Castiel demonstrates. “But I have always thought that is impersonal. When I am speaking to God, I look up at His most beautiful creation. The sky, with the sun, or the stars. It reminds me of how grateful I am for being given this life.”

It’s obvious that he really believes what he’s saying. Dean is caught by the intense emotion in Castiel’s usually reserved face.

“He’s God. If he... There have to be millions of people praying to him all the time.”

“He is father to every one of us, and I believe that He hears me.”

They’re quiet as they try to communicate with their eyes what they can’t with words. Doubt, but a desire to understand. Conviction that comes from a lifetime of faith.

Sam’s phone beeps loudly.

“Mom says dinner’s ready.”

“Alright. I guess we’re going.” Dean puts the candy in his bag after letting Sam take a couple of pieces, then zips it up and grabs the bottle of milk.

It’s a roast and there’s fortunately enough for Castiel to sit with them. He charms Mary with his old-fashioned politeness, accepting whatever she offers for him to eat and asking about the local Anglican church that they go to on special occasions like Christmas. John is quiet, especially after finding out that the Novak-Miltons don’t have a car. He looks at Castiel like if his wife didn’t get along with him so well he would have made up a reason for him to leave already.

They work on the project, then sit in front of the CD collection and sort them into piles—these ones Castiel likes, these he wouldn’t mind listening to, and these they’re both indifferent about. The ones he doesn’t like get pushed into the corner and they listen to music as Castiel talks about his constant reaffirmation of his faith.

“No one is born a Christian. My family went to church every Sunday and we read pages from the Bible every night as our devotionals. It was only when I was nine years old, listening to a sermon, that I truly understood and believed what was being said. Then when I was twelve I committed again to God and I have done so quietly every day since.”

“You bought a life-long membership?”

Castiel just smiles at that and they talk about something else. There’s the unspoken understanding that Dean isn’t interested in becoming a Christian. He just wants to know more about it because it’s an important part of Castiel’s life. A bigger deal than Dean liking rock music, but he’d want Castiel to be respectful of that too.

When Castiel goes home Sam stops him on the landing. “Jess said that her big sister said that there’s going to be a dance at your school in a couple of weeks.”

“Who’s Jess’ big sister?”

“I think you should ask Castiel to go with you.”

Dean stares at his little brother, hand gripping the stair railing. “You what?”

“Don’t you like him?”

His heart is beating too fast and he’s nervous enough to forget how to breathe. “That’s funny, Sam. Ha ha. Now let me past, I’ve got homework to do-”

“It’s really obvious.”

He pushes past him and goes into his room, but Sam follows him in. Even though he knows he should just play it cool and tell Sam he’s imagining things, he desperately wants to tell someone in his family about what he’s been feeling. He’s never come out to them because he was terrified that they’d throw him out of the house, or at least be different around him. Mom and Dad might be disappointed that his life won’t turn out the way they expected, or not be able to see past his sexuality, or love him less than they do now. It’s a whole can of worms that Sam’s decided to smash open.

“Dean, are you okay?”

“Why do you think I’m gay?” he blurts out.

Sam blinks at him naively. “Are you gay? I thought you just liked Castiel.” His eyes widen in realisation. “Oh, is that why you’re freaking out now? I’m sorry, I... You know I’d be okay with...that.”

“Oh my God,” he says, horrified.

“Really. I was fine with the idea of you and Castiel dating. I’m not going to get weird about it just ‘cause it turns out this is a more...permanent thing. You’re still Dean. And, you’ve got the rest of the Jolly Ranchers.”

His brother has just found out he’s gay and his smile is exactly the same. He goes to his bag, takes out the candy and hands it to Sam who grins at him. “Thanks.”

“I really need a hug now.”

“Oh, yeah, go ahead.” Sam’s shorter arms go around him and he pats his back awkwardly. “It’s been a while since we’ve done this.”

“Yeah,” Dean murmurs into his hair.

“Mom would be better at it.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Why haven’t you told her?”

He pulls away, rubbing his face with his hands. “It’s not something you can just say.”

“Why not? If you are...gay, you have to tell her eventually.”

“No, it’s...it’s big, Sam. If it went the wrong way they might not want me to live here anymore.”

“Because you’re in love with Castiel?” Sam says disbelievingly. “He is kind of weird, but he’s nice and that’s what Mom’d want for you-”

“Why do you want me to ask him to the dance?”

Sam stares at him as though it should be obvious, then sighs and leans against the wall. “You like each other.”

“We can be friends.”

“You can be friends and dating.”

“I don’t think Cas-”

“When you’re not looking at him, he’s watching you.”

“What?”

“I think that’s why Dad doesn’t like him. I was walking behind you guys today and I swear he watches you more than where he’s going most of the time. Don’t even get me started on that conversation when we bought the milk. I actually felt bad for you.” Sam claps his hands together. “And that whole thing where you fell through the door? Damn, Dean. That was lame.”

He remembers all the things he noticed but thought that he’d imagined.

Castiel staring too long when his shirt was wet and clinging. Seeing him reflected in the bathroom mirror, checking out Dean’s half-naked body. Jo’s knowing looks when they were arguing about the project. Him startling when the door closed and they were in Dean’s room together. Eyes lingering on the slept-in bed. Castiel smiling whenever Dean laughed. Staring back without saying anything.

“Do you have his number?”

“Nope,” Dean says and falls back onto the bed.

“You should get it.”

“What, are you pimping out your older brother?”

“You wouldn’t be anywhere without my help.”

They fight over the blue ones and his homework stays unfinished on his desk.

* * *

Mr Singer is back with his arm in a sling, telling them proudly that his wife is pregnant again. The news has put him in such a good mood that he takes them to the court for a game of basketball. By the end of the period Dean has a headache from the shrill screeching of the whistle and Mr Singer is grinning at them as they shuffle out of the gym.

At lunch he goes to a nearby 7-Eleven to buy some Ibuprofen and a soda. He’s caught walking back into school by Mr Crowley, who considers him sternly for about ten minutes before laughing and letting him go without any disciplinary action. Dean thinks he’s a teacher just for kicks.

When class is over he finds Adam with Jo at her locker and she’s smiling at him. As Dean passes he gives her a thumbs up and kicks the air dramatically in a representation of what he would do to Adam if she asked, then points at him just in case she didn’t understand the gesture. Jo starts to laugh and he pushes into the crowd before Adam can look over his shoulder.

Castiel’s waiting on the steps outside.

“Do you want to go to the park?” Dean asks and is relieved when the other boy nods.

They walk there in silence. Though Castiel doesn’t know the area, he follows Dean without question. There’s a bench he always goes to that overlooks the playground. He can remember sunny afternoons with Mary pushing him on the swing, while Sam ran around and John watched them, close enough to run in if anyone got hurt. He sits down with Castiel beside him.

“You don’t have to pick up Sam?”

“He’s hanging out with his friends.”

The playground equipment sways in the wind, which lifts the ends of Castiel’s hair.

“I spoke to Jo earlier today.”

“Yeah?”

Castiel hesitates before asking, “Are you dating her?”

“No. We’re... No.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“She seems to care for someone else. I was concerned.”

“You were worried about me?”

The question surprises Castiel who says, “Of course.”

Just then Dean gets a text from his brother.

_you suck_  
_love u 2 sammy_  
_have you asked castiel yet?_  
_no shut up_  
_have you even talked to him?_  
_we r at the park_  
_dean! why are you texting me?_  
_u txted me 1st_  
_you suck_  
_:P_

He puts the phone into his jeans pocket. The sun has come out from behind the clouds, warming his skin and brightening the blue of Castiel’s eyes.

“Don’t you get hot wearing that trench coat all the time?”

“No.”

“Are you sure you’re not a robot?”

“Yes.”

Castiel stands up and takes off his coat. Underneath it he’s wearing a white button-down that better shows his figure. There are creases in the shirt, the collar’s crooked and his hair was messy even before sitting out here in the wind. All of that just seems to frame his attractive features.

He gets another text, this time from Jo.

_I heard from sam that youre planning on asking out the new kid._  
_i cant with u all txting me_  
_If you get rejected call me and ill come over._  
_wow thx_  
_If hes a christian he might not be okay with it._  
_its cas_  
_Yes i see how that changes things._  
_gr8_  
_I worry because i care._  
_stop txting me_

The phone goes back into his pocket.

“The presentation is due next week.”

“Yeah. You nervous?”

“Are you?”

“What?”

“Are you nervous, Dean?”

It could be the texting that’s thrown him off his game, or his complete lack of experience at asking anyone out, or the vulnerability that comes with saying that he’s gay and cares about Castiel as more than just a friend. This changes everything. He’ll have to come out to his parents, at least. Maybe Castiel will say no and go to the dance with Bela. This could be a terrible idea. 

Looking into Castiel’s eyes, it doesn’t seem like one.

“Yes,” he says honestly.

“Why?”

“Because I like you.”

His phone vibrates distractingly in his pocket. It’s another text from Jo.

_No. :P_

The phone is turned off and pushed down into his bag.

He finds Castiel looking up at the sky, praying with a smile on his face. He puts his arm over the back of the bench and waits patiently for him to finish his talk with God. Then Dean moves slowly forward, shifting in his seat, until they’re kissing.

There’s the feeling that, despite everything, “This isn’t right.”

In an instant it all disappears.

Gabriel is standing there with a handful of coins. He throws one up into the air. It spins and vanishes. Then another, and another, until he’s holding nothing. He shows that his hands are empty. “Are you feeling remorseful yet, Dean-o?”

“Will it get me out of here faster if I say yes?” he replies sullenly.

“Wishful thinking. That’s good. Very human.”

He tries again.

* * *

**ANIMALISTIC**

There’s not much to do in a jail cell except sleep and talk to the officers guarding him. After a couple of days they feel comfortable enough with him that they let him join their late-night card games from behind the bars. He’s a good hand at poker and has to watch as they spitefully eat his winnings in front of him. Jail food is the worst, which he tells them repeatedly to their amused laughter.

Instead of Sam coming to bail him out it’s Andy Gallagher that walks into the police station. 

“Oh yeah, that’s him,” he tells the sheriff, who is following close behind.

“I’m afraid I can’t release this man until I’m given sufficient reason. Evidence that he’s innocent of the crimes that we suspect him of, or a judge’s ruling. He used a firearm on a residential property that, as far as we can tell, he was trespassing on. The owner of the property has since been reported missing and he is being held on suspicion of-”

Andy puts a hand on the sheriff’s arm and does his mind control thing. “It’s okay. He didn’t do it.”

“I should probably-”

“Let him out of the cell, yeah. I don’t want you guys feeling bad later when you find out he was innocent this whole time.”

Dean’s all smiles as an officer unlocks the cell and actually helps him stand up. “What the hell,” he says between gritted teeth when he gets close to Andy, grabbing his jacket and confiscated items. The gun was taken away to be fingerprinted so he writes it off as a loss.

“We’re just gonna go now, thanks for all the help.” Andy waves at the officers and a couple of them wave dazedly back.

As soon as they’re out of the building Dean drops the smile and hisses, “What are you doing here? Where’s Sam?”

“He called me. Said the hunt was taking longer than he thought and he didn’t want to leave you behind bars.”

“I didn’t know he had your number.”

“No, it’s...the special powers thing. Yeah.” He unlocks the doors of his admittedly sweet van and Dean gets into the passenger side.

“Did he say anything about the werewolf we’re chasing?”

Andy shakes his head apologetically. “It was fragmented images, I can’t... He has a lead but it’s taken him out of town.”

“A werewolf wouldn’t run like that.”

People who turn into werewolves don’t have any memory of it when they change back. The guy they’re after couldn’t have gotten far before becoming human again and either turning himself in or, more likely, going home to get himself cleaned up and book an appointment with a therapist.

“Well, I don’t know anything. Sam just asked me to give you a ride. Motel 6 on Beckett Road, right?” He starts up the engine without waiting for Dean’s answer and they drive away from the police station. “Do you have your room key?”

“Nah, Sam has everything important. Just as well because they searched me when I got arrested.”

Andy glances at him. “What happened? You got caught shooting up a house?”

“I was standing outside and fired a warning shot so the werewolf trying to take down Sam knew that he had backup. I thought it would take a couple of minutes for the cops to arrive, but they were in the area already. There wasn’t any choice except to let them arrest me. Sam got away, that’s what’s important. These seats are really comfortable by the way. Loving the upholstery.”

“Thanks.” Andy bites his lip and taps his finger on the steering wheel. “So, I’ve kind of had some time to think about this, but werewolves are real?”

“Do you want me to write you a list?”

“I was just surprised it didn’t stop at demons and ghosts.”

“Sometimes I don’t think it stops anywhere,” Dean murmurs as he looks out of the window.

“Vampires, too? Witches? The creature of the Black Lagoon?”

“Hey, take a left here. I want to check the werewolf’s house, see if he left anything.”

Andy looks vaguely nervous but makes the turn without protesting.

When they’re walking up to the house, Dean brandishing a small knife that Andy thinks _might_ have silver in it, he gets a phone call from Sam.

“If you’re answering I guess that means Andy got you out.”

“Yeah. What happened to our big bad?”

The front door is slightly ajar. He pushes it carefully open with his elbow.

“I followed his trail to a small town about five hours away. I’m here now scoping out a place I think he might be hiding in.”

Inside there’s a shredded body with blood pooling out around it and lashes of red on the walls. Adam covers his mouth with both hands, eyes wide with shock.

“That’s great, Sam. I’ve got a fresh body here-”

There’s the skittering sound of claws on hardwood.

“-and noises upstairs. Ditch the stakeout and get back as quickly as you can.”

“You’re at his house?”

“Yeah, and armed with a butter knife. Andy’s with me.” He can hear Sam’s muffled swearing and a car engine starting up. With the call finished he hands the phone to Andy, who’s staring at the body as if it’s impossible for him to look away. “Are you gonna be okay with this?”

“I... Guess I’m here to help.”

“Call the cops if I tell you to, or there’s any trouble you think I can’t handle. Stick close and watch your back. Got it?”

Andy holds tightly onto the phone and nods.

As soon as they start up the creaking wooden stairs the werewolf stops moving. Its survival instinct wins out over its need to defend its territory until Dean steps onto the landing. Roaring, it charges forward, hurling Dean against the wall. He takes in deep, painful breaths as he follows the werewolf and jabs the knife into its chest. Unaffected, it claws at him and he pulls away from its attacks.

The werewolf turns on Andy, who nearly falls several times as he walks backwards down the stairs. He has his hands up, still holding onto the phone. “Hey, come on, easy. I’m not going to hurt you. You need to calm down.”

It’s clear he’s using mind control and though it isn’t working as well as it did on the cops earlier, the werewolf is standing still and swaying, calming down enough for Dean to inch around it.

“This isn’t scary. We’re just here to say hi. Wow, you really look like a human. Just close your mouth, okay? Yeah, like that, thank you. Dean I don’t think I can stop talking to him. Stay calm, everything’s okay.”

Working quickly, Dean checks out the rooms on the second floor. A kid’s bedroom which he doesn’t look at for more than a second, an untidy bathroom, a master bedroom that the guy has to himself, which means no silver jewellery or ornate mirrors that he can see. In the study he finds a silver cutlery set. Butter knives again, but there are more of them and they’re all definitely silver.

“Just gimme a second,” Andy tells him when he comes back to the stairwell. “You need to sit down. Keep your mouth closed, yeah, like that. Just sit down there with your back to the wall. I’m right here. It’s okay. Now, close your eyes. Yeah. Yeah, thank you.”

Dean waits until Andy has closed his eyes too before driving the makeshift weapons into the werewolf’s body. It’s not the cleanest job he’s ever done, bloodier than it would have been with a silver bullet. He makes sure it’s covered up before letting Andy open his eyes again and leading him out of the house.

“Oh God,” Andy says on a ragged breath. “I killed him.”

It’s such a surreal thing to hear when there’s blood drying between his fingers.

“This is wrong.”

He’s human and he tries again.

* * *

**FAMILY**

His cheek is resting on a woman’s thigh. Slender fingers with polished nails drag through his hair, until he blearily opens his eyes to see her smiling kindly down at him. He’s slightly hung over from drinking the night before and tired from not getting enough sleep.

“It’s nine o’clock. Your brother asked me to wake you up if you were still here.”

The door to the hotel room opens and Sam walks in, every step hurting Dean’s already aching head. “This is why I didn’t come, Dean. I knew you’d take it too far-”

“You’re pretty,” he tells the woman with wavy blonde hair and amused blue eyes. “Why aren’t I marrying you?”

Sam pulls him up from the couch with more force than necessary. “Because you love your fiancée. So much that you don’t flirt with women you barely know two hours before your wedding.”

“Oh, yeah.” Dean grins at her, hardly noticing how messy the room is. His friends are passed out on the bed and floor, some with bottles and streamers still in their hands. There’re pieces of clothing scattered around from when the strippers were here. The woman stayed either because Dean had fallen asleep on her or Sam had asked her to keep an eye on him. He vaguely remembers cake.

“You’re about to marry the love of your life and you risk it all on a bachelor party that Ash planned for you. I just don’t understand how you can do that. What if-”

He stops in the middle of the hallway with an awed expression. “I’m getting married today.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you are.” Sam smiles, then hurries him along.

Once he’s showered, shaved, eaten and dressed, he waits for Sam to find the rings and adjust the corsage thing Ellen insisted that they wear. “The car’s outside.”

“My car?”

“Yes, but you’re not driving. I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules of getting married or something.”

There are five bags that Sam has to rummage through for no apparent reason.

“Could you hurry it up?” Dean taps his foot impatiently.

“Geez, all you have to do is show up and say the right words. The best man has to do all the work. I’ve been carrying around these rings for months, dude. I even did your tie for you. And I gotta make a speech later.”

“You were pretty eager to sign up for it, if I remember-”

His brother and best man maturely throws a pillow at him to get him to shut up.

Later they’re sitting in the Impala and waiting for a light to change. Sam’s looking at his watch more than at the road, which would bug Dean more if he hadn’t chosen the music they’re listening to, claiming that it’s his ‘special day’ and it’s that or stop at a fast-food place and get him a cheeseburger.

“Chill out, Sam. Even if we’re late I think they have to wait for us.”

“Wow. How did you find someone to agree to marry you?”

Dean turns up the volume instead of answering, playing air guitar with a passion.

They come up to the church, an old building with spires and stained glass windows. The ceremony is taking place in the garden as a compromise, because he wasn’t sure how he felt about having a traditional wedding when he hasn’t been to church more than twice in his life. Chairs are lined up on either side of a stone path, framed by the flowers of the garden as well as the ones that have been strewn around everywhere. Rose petals are handed to children who hurl them into the air. The women in his life are getting a little too excited, he thinks, even before he sees the ribbons. White and blue appears to be the theme, from the corsages to the chairs to the invitations he hardly looked at but people are waving proudly at each other.

It would be a lie to say that he isn’t nervous. This makes it all official. What he’s always been private about is, at least today and in front of everyone that they both care about, public. This is a commitment he probably won’t make more than once in his life. 

But as far as Dean’s concerned, it’s hardly more of a commitment than they’ve already made. He doesn’t want anyone else. Signing a piece of paper, making speeches, wearing a ring, that’s just telling everyone. So he lets Sam mess with his tie and gets out of the car.

“You ready?”

Dean waves politely at a couple of older women who have recognised him and are tittering in his direction. “I don’t know, Sammy. Do you think we could elope?”

“Ellen would hunt you down. Come on, we’ve got fifteen minutes to make sure you remember your lines.”

He stands with Sam and the priest at the end of the path, going over everything. People take their seats, leaning over to talk to each other or fiddle with the decorations. Ellen’s laughing with Jo as they chase down a boy who stole the basket of petals. Castiel comes out of the church with Gabriel and catches Dean’s attention. They grin at each other, at once bashful and proud.

Gabriel comes over to ask, “Are you really going through with this?”

“Well hi to you too.”

“If you do this you can’t deny it later. Are you really going to marry him? Together until death in the eyes of God?” He’s unusually serious, though they’ve had this conversation before.

He tries to find the right words to say to Gabriel, the older brother of the man he’s about to marry and friend of his own brother, and fails. “Yeah,” he says and smiles because he couldn’t freaking stop himself from doing that if he tried.

Gabriel whistles, patting him on the shoulder before going back to Castiel.

Before long Dean is standing in front of the priest with the love of his life, itching to reach out and touch him and reassure himself that all of this is real. Or kiss him, because Castiel in a suit is hotter than he would have thought possible, especially when he’s smiling at him like that.

“Today you choose each other before your family and friends, to begin your life together. For all the tomorrows that follow, you will choose each other over and again, in the privacy of your hearts. Let your love and friendship guide you, as you learn and grow together. Experience the wonders of the world, even as patience and wisdom calm the restless nature. Through your partnership, triumph over the challenges in your path. Through the comfort of loving arms, may you always find a safe place to call home.”

With rings on their fingers, the priest tells them finally, “By the power vested in me by the state, I pronounce you wed. You may now kiss your husband.”

Castiel rests his hand on his arm and Dean touches his waist as they pull in close and kiss for the first time of their married life. The wedding guests cheer, Sam’s voice easy to hear over the not inconsiderable crowd of loved ones and well-wishers, and Dean’s blushing by the time he turns to face them, which of course only makes them louder.

The reception is held inside the church, where they’re set up at their own table but not given anything to eat, just champagne which Dean will admit to being grateful for. Castiel takes off his suit jacket and hangs it carefully over the back of his chair. Once people have mostly stopped lining up to say congratulations along with misguided comments about ‘how nice it is to see two gay people making a traditional commitment’, and the photographer is satisfied, they have a few minutes of quiet before Sam’s meant to give his speech.

“Did you enjoy the party?” Castiel asks, quietly enough for only him to hear.

Dean puts his flute down abruptly. “What did Sam tell you?”

“I haven’t had a chance to speak to him. You look tired.”

“Oh.”

Castiel touches his cheek so that he can look him over. “Your face is somewhat pale.”

“I love you,” he murmurs and leans in to kiss him, feeling Castiel’s fingers pre-emptively wind into his hair...they’re interrupted by Sam standing up to give his speech, so they kiss quickly and smile at each other before parting.

It goes well, there are jokes that Dean doesn’t understand and isn’t sure he wants to when the old church ladies laugh the loudest at them. Then in apparent revenge for playing his music in the car earlier, Sam calls on Dean to make a speech, winking at him as he hands over the microphone.

“Well, uh. Hey everyone, thanks for being here. I’m not as good at making speeches as Sammy, so, yeah.” His grip tightens on the microphone and his eyes fix on the middle of the floor. “I never thought I’d be standing here. Honestly...after Mom and Dad died, I thought it’d always just be me and Sam. I was friends with Cas for a long time before we started dating, and that only happened because I...let myself realise that you’re not born with family. You make it.” He becomes confident enough to look around the room as he speaks. “I’m standing here because I love Cas and he was patient enough to wait for me to work that out, and if I were a better man I would thank God for bringing him to a place where I could meet him. Yeah. So, uh, thanks to everyone that helped out with today. Ellen Harvelle, you’re amazing. It’d be great if someone could bring some food to our table.” He finds the button to switch the microphone off and sits down again. “Good job?”

“Yes.” Castiel holds his hand on the surface of the table.

They dance but not with each other, with Jo and Anna and little kids who ask, including one boy who tells Dean in confidence that he’s going to marry his friend Matt when they’re old enough. With the tables left unattended Dean walks around the room, using Sam as a cover while he steals pieces of fruit and tiny hamburgers with toothpicks and crackers and cheese cubes. His mouth is full so he can’t protest when Sam leaves him with an especially serious-looking Anna.

“It’s a beautiful wedding. I want this for you, Dean.”

He swallows down his mouthful of food. “Uh, thanks.”

“You chose him in this life,” she says, watching the people twirling their dance partners, dresses flaring out in flashes of colour.

“I’d choose Cas every time.”

Anna smiles at him. “So you were always in love.”

He looks at her oddly as he piles miniature foods onto the napkin in his hand. “Everyone knew that.”

“Good luck, Dean.”

With that his sister-in-law goes off to join in with the dancing, her dress sparkling under the lights.

The friends he left passed out in the hotel room this morning finally wander in, dishevelled and obviously hung over. They slump into chairs and wave when they see him. It’s Dean’s first apologetic smile of their marriage.

Later, when he thinks people won’t see them or are preoccupied with their own partners, he shares a slow dance with Castiel. With a hand at his waist and resting on his chest, hair brushing against his cheek and the warmth of a body he knows so well, he can forget about everything else but the intimacy of this and the silver rings they’re wearing.

“You are the best man I know,” comes Castiel’s voice in his ear, “and I’ll love you for the rest of my life.”

What he believes unwaveringly is harder for Dean to put faith in. He wouldn’t be here today if he didn’t believe that he could make Castiel happy, and if that didn’t mean more to him than being the righteous man and staying away because he thinks Castiel deserves better. Instead of protesting or drowning in his feelings of guilt, he murmurs, “Thanks for marrying me,” and strokes his fingers lightly over his hipbone, pressing his lips to sensitive skin.

Castiel draws back so that they can kiss, then he takes Dean’s hand and leads him into the hallway that they’ve been dancing near. It’s narrow and they have to pass people coming out of the kitchen with trays of food and drinks. They make turns until Dean is sure he couldn’t find his way back alone. Eventually he’s pulled into a small room, lined with shelves and nearly claustrophobic. There are instruments in old-fashioned cases, stacks of books and sheet music.

“Take off your jacket.”

“Is this what it’s gonna be like being married to you?” he jokes as he shrugs off the suit jacket. Castiel gives him a disapproving look and picks it up from the floor, checking that the corsage hasn’t been damaged before folding it over a table. 

Dean’s laughing when he’s pressed against the door, hands coming up unconsciously to touch Castiel’s elbows, lips brushing over each other, breathing the same air. This isn’t a day for urgency so they kiss, deep but gentle, lovingly, looking into eyes and smiling. Time passes. He forgets about everything else because he’s in incredible, mutual love, and it feels awesome. 

Just when it becomes more passionate—fingers tugging at the fabric of a shirt, breathing heavily—Castiel takes a step back, saying, “We should get back.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, reluctantly. “Otherwise Sam’ll come looking for us.”

At the end of the day when it’s dark outside he’s tired and his face hurts from grinning too much. The cake is packed away with the promise that it will be kept in the fridge until next Sunday so Castiel can bring it home after church. Since they won’t let him carry the used plates to the kitchen he asks Ellen to dance, making her laugh as thanks for everything that she’d done in preparation for today. He’s surprised by a shower of petals when he’s talking to one of the guests and apologises to several of Castiel’s relatives whose names he can never remember—it’s a big family he’s married into, but they’re quick to forgive him when he shakes their hands and stares at them blankly.

A girl kisses him on a dare and others start lining up to do the same, until he marches over to Castiel and dips him as dramatically as he can. “Sorry,” he says before kissing the hell out of him. 

Castiel doesn’t complain.

They come home to a house filled with boxes of Castiel’s stuff, which they’re planning to unpack together over the next week. Instead of a conventional honeymoon they’ve both taken a fortnight off work to settle into living with each other and enjoy the new closeness—even when they were engaged Castiel refused to move in with Dean, though he stayed over most nights and knows the house as well as his old apartment. With dragging feet they head up to the bedroom, where Castiel turns on a lamp and Dean sits on the end of the bed, rubbing his face tiredly.

“I’m exhausted.”

Castiel nods as he takes off his shoes and tie, unpinning the corsage and placing it on the chest of drawers where it is reflected in the mirror.

“Does your face hurt?” Dean pokes himself in the cheek, frowning. When Castiel comes over to loosen his tie—they know from experience that if Dean does it wrinkles are the best they can hope for—he prods him in the cheek too. Then smiles at Castiel’s expression, which of course just makes his face hurt more.

“I think you’re very tired.”

He hesitates before asking, “Does it freak you out sometimes...that we only do this once?” 

Castiel tilts his head as he thinks about the question. “We only have one life,” he points out. “It doesn’t frighten me to share mine with you.”

The tie is pulled out from his shirt collar and dropped onto the bed or floor, he isn’t sure, he’s not paying attention to it. His corsage digs into his chest as they press close, so he pulls off his jacket and throws it somewhere past the bed. Getting Castiel’s shirt unbuttoned is the best they can do and he gasps softly into his neck, heart beating fast as fingers stroke over him and he grasps blindly, vulnerable but trusting this man more than anyone else with himself. There are breaths in his ear, words he won’t remember later. He falls asleep, fully clothed and dishevelled, with his arm over Castiel’s waist and happy.

* * *

He wakes up at six o’clock just as he does every morning, but is persuaded back to sleep by Castiel’s warmth and gentle breathing. Hours later he gets out of bed to change and have a shower, hanging up the wedding suit to appease Castiel, though it’s clear it’ll have to be sent to the dry cleaner. Castiel comes into the bathroom to brush his teeth and they have a conversation about whether or not it’s okay to get their rings wet which ends with Castiel getting into the shower with him, ‘to prove a point’ just as kissing him is ‘so that you will be quiet’. 

When Anna helped move in the boxes she left a plate of sandwiches in the fridge, so they eat them as they cut through tape and figure out what should go in which room. Dean flirts shamelessly but most of Castiel’s charm is accidental, getting his hand stuck in a box or distracted by photo albums from when Sam and Dean were kids, telling stories about his own childhood that Dean’s heard before but doesn’t mind listening to again. 

He has more CDs than there’s room for near the player, so they compromise by spreading the collection out with photo frames and coloured glass things, moving them onto another shelf. The clock gets moved but he keeps looking up at where it was to check the time. They talk about where they can put nails into the walls and the calendar gets put on the fridge with magnets until they can find a good place for it.

When Castiel is looking through boxes Dean pushes him down onto the carpet. It’s far from comfortable but worth knocking over that stack of books and hitting his head and having Castiel laugh at his clumsy attempts at pulling off his shirt. As they look up at the ceiling they talk about the possibility of there being a drill in the garage that could be used to secure the older shelves. Then, inexplicably, they start laughing and kiss like a married couple.

Castiel makes dinner to prove that he’s capable of cooking something other than pasta. It comes out burned and Dean stubbornly eats it until Castiel actually takes the plate away and says he’ll order takeout. They sit outside at night and watch the stars. He falls easily asleep.

* * *

_A line of salt. There’s a gun in his hand. He’s breathing heavily, from exertion and more fear than he’ll admit to. Flashes of white. A child’s emotionless face, empty eyes. He fires the gun and rock salt explodes into a shelf. His phone is in his pocket but it’s too late to call anyone. Movement in the corner. He cocks his gun threateningly._

_“Come out, you sons of bitches.”_

_Nothing. Then the door wrenches off the frame and hurtles towards him, stopping short of the salt line and skidding across the floor. He watches as it splits down the middle, wood splintering out, cracking sounds. The window behind him shatters and wind gusts in. He turns and throws a little of the salt left in his pocket, aiming the shotgun at the fluttering curtains, spinning back around when there’s a voice in the room. The ghost of a child whispering words that don’t make sense._

_Reflexively he shoots at her, the rock salt tearing her transparent body into lines of white that disappear. Her brother comes out, closer to the salt line, just standing there and watching him until Dean shoots at him too. The girl is back, taking less time to recover than any of the ghosts he’s fought before. She stands at the salt line, swaying. His eyes widen as she slowly smiles._

_“Shit, what-”_

_He pushes himself back along the hardwood floor. The white dress drifts out, though the wind is blowing in furiously. Her foot lifts, more a show than anything, because the next moment she’s on his side of the salt line, smiling, and her eyes are coloured black._

_Low whispering. Distant laughter. He gets up and strikes at her with his the shotgun. Her form wavers but is unaffected. She steps closer. He fires the gun and she vanishes again. The wind stops._

_Then there’s a scream from the other side of the house._

_“Sam?” he shouts and grabs some of the salt to stuff into his pockets. Screw the salt line if it isn’t going to work. Running up the stairs, bracing the gun and firing it as soon as he sees his brother cornered by the two freaky demon ghosts from hunter hell._

_As soon as they disappear, so does the dream._

* * *

It’s three thirty when he wakes up, shaken by his nightmare. He sits up in bed, staring at the clock until the number changes. Turns on the light and watches his husband sleep. With a nervousness he doesn’t understand and everything telling him not to, Dean reaches out to take Castiel’s hand and, after a moment of hesitation, puts it on his shoulder with the fingers spread slightly apart. The minutes pass. He unconsciously hunches over as he thinks about _nothing,_ as if there should be _something_ there for him to remember but isn’t. As if there’s a significance to this gesture that he doesn’t know.

Maybe he grips Castiel’s arm too tightly because the hand goes around his back, hugging him in sleepy reassurance. Dean presses his forehead to his chest until he knows that Castiel is asleep again. Then he puts his hand over his shoulder. Skin on skin and nothing more important.

Dean grabs a shirt and puts it on as he goes downstairs to the living room, where he turns on the TV, not caring about whatever old movie is playing but wanting the white noise of stranger’s voices, cheesy sound effects and outdated music. The photo albums are in the cabinet beneath the TV and he takes them out, setting them heavily down on the couch. He flicks the switch of a lamp and picks one of the albums that has pictures of his mom, who died when he was a kid. For hours he stares at pictures of the Winchester family in the eighties. At the beach, on road trips, at theme parks, getting ready for school, on holidays with old friends of his parents. He takes them out of the plastic and spreads them out on the table and the arms of his chair, his own thighs, staring at them as if they’ll suddenly reassemble and make sense. His life is somehow foreign.

When he wakes up the TV is turned off and Castiel hands him a coffee. They don’t talk about it and the rest of the day passes easily. In the afternoon he calls Sam to ask him if he has any nails or hooks lying around. 

“Yeah, I could bring them over for you. I’ve still got that toolbox you gave me last Christmas, that’s fully stocked.”

“You haven’t used it?”

“Not much call for DIY in a shared apartment.”

“Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah Dean?”

“Have we...when we were kids, you know, you were in middle school...did Dad ever take us to Burkittsville?”

“Where’s that?”

“Indiana. You don’t remember us being there? You were...I don’t know how old you were. I can’t remember if we went there or if Dad just talked about it-”

“Dean, I don’t know why you’re asking, but Dad never wanted to take us out of state. If we made the trip when Mom was alive I was way too young to remember it. I haven’t seen any photos, sorry. I don’t think I’d even heard that name before you asked me. Why? Did you find something when you were moving stuff around with Cas?”

He forces a laugh. “I was just looking at photos of us and I thought I remembered something. It must have been another town.”

“Yeah. If I remember anything, I’ll let you know.”

The call ends and he goes on with his life.

In the low table on his side of the bed, Dean has tooth floss, a busted watch, cough drops from the last time he was sick, the paper that he and Sam started writing his wedding vows on. Then the things more precious to him—the amulet Sam gave their dad when he was eight, that he wore almost every day after that, which Dean puts on when they go to visit him at the cemetery. Mom’s charm bracelet, given to her by his grandparents. Both bundled up in Dad’s old jacket, which he could never bring himself to wear after the man was gone. Sam got their rings and put everything else in storage as far as he knows. He keeps his memories of them close to him, even physically. Family is the most important.

He’s not surprised to see Castiel gently putting away his Bible, leather-bound and worn with the inscription inside the cover written by his father. There are bookmarks and neatly trimmed ribbons in between the pages. It’s an unassuming edition made beautiful by the obvious love and care that has been taken with it over the years. Placed next to it are a pen and a small jar of coins, then the drawer slides shut.

“What do you think Heaven looks like?”

Castiel smiles at him indulgently and shifts closer on the bed. “It looks as God intended it to.”

“You’re not sold on angels sitting on clouds with harps? You know, white wings and great vocals...” As he speaks his hand catches Castiel’s and their fingers curl around each other.

“I hope that I will see it one day. However, I think it’s beautiful without me.”

If Dean believed in Heaven he would think it looks like this, sitting with Castiel and talking, falling silent and watching each other, glancing away and trusting that the other will still be there or quickly return.

He falls asleep in the soft lamplight while he waits for Castiel to finish his devotional.

* * *

_It’s hard to breathe. The seatbelt cuts into him. There’s blood on his face and hands. He hugs himself loosely with one arm, gasping with pain when he puts too much pressure on his body, but wanting to treat the internal injury the way he would if he could see it. His shoulder presses against the passenger seat. Dad’s sitting there with a bullet in his leg, Sam next to him driving the car._

_“The hospital’s only ten minutes away,” Sam’s saying and he holds onto that. Maybe he hasn’t been through worse than this, but he’ll make it through, so Dad can be awkwardly apologetic about getting possessed by a demon that damn near killed him and Sam can smile worriedly the way he does and he can meet all the important people in his life he hasn’t had a chance to yet._

_He struggles to breathe around the blood in his lungs. Dad and Sam are talking but it takes all the attention he can spare to notice that. Thinking about good times. Old girlfriends. Food at places all over the country. Taking care of Sam when he was little, school-age and then rebellious in high school. Christmases with the plastic trees and glittery signs strung up around whatever place they were staying in. Dad telling him he did good. It hurts so much he can hardly think, but his memories are a part of him that’s inseparable from who he is. He is what he’s been through. This will all just be a memory someday._

_For now there’s blood coating the inside of his mouth and he fights to stay conscious._

_Sam’s talking. A light. Impact. Glass shattering. ___

* * *

_There’s a table in the darkness, with wires and twisting metal, promising pain. He knows it the way you know that the third step creaks and there’s a nail sticking out of a chair that you avoid but forget to tell anyone else to. Sometimes he hates it. Sometimes he loves it because it’s always there with him, while hooks drag through his skin and screaming, fire that feels cold like ice and nightmares he kept hidden. The only thing he can make sense of is the temptation._

_Twisted faces and black eyes, beautiful people and affection, all offering the same thing. Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up. They take away his movement and blind him repeatedly, distract his thoughts with pain, pull out his tongue, claw off his skin, hug him and whisper in his ears. Only Alistair mentions the table but the others talk about the knife, take it, take it, please. They set themselves back years when they lose patience and try to threaten him. They scar him with truths spoken by people he cared about years ago, that he lost and doesn’t know well enough to doubt, friends, lovers, Mom, himself. Give up. Give up. Give up. This is it._

_Wings burn black onto his skin when he reaches out to touch them. Sam shoots him with the Colt. Dad just shoots him. Anyone who comes disappears again. Just the table, waiting there, just for him. It’s a kind of rescue. But not any relief. When he takes the knife everything stops. The silence makes him feel powerful._

* * *

Dean wakes up and runs to the bathroom, pushing up the toilet seat and falling down beside it, hand gripping the edge of the counter hard enough to turn his fingers white. With shuddering, choking breaths he tries to reject what’s making his stomach so sick. All he can manage is to spit and the strength goes out of his arm. He’s shaking. When he stands up and sees his own pale, wide-eyed face in the mirror, he flinches away, closing his eyes and seeing the darkness there, opening them again and seeing Castiel, lunging forward to hug him.

“Cas,” he breathes.

A hand rubs his back soothingly. “You had a nightmare.” 

He just holds him tightly, looking up with fear and panic, breathing through his mouth because he’s desperate for air, just as he’s desperate for better reassurance that what he saw didn’t mean anything. Or at least not what he thinks it does.

It’s early enough in the morning for them to make a decent breakfast and eat it outside while watching the sun rise. They talk about the weather, that it’s getting cooler already though there aren’t any clouds in the sky. Shoulders or knees touching, they laugh at old jokes and Dean relaxes into the familiarity. Eventually they clean up the plates and get back to working on the house.

Castiel comes up behind him when he’s hammering in a nail and he’s so surprised he takes the Lord’s name in vain. Even though he apologises, Castiel doesn’t say anything, walking away to come back twenty minutes later with the ‘blasphemy jar’ that used to sit on the kitchen bench. He’d gotten the idea from a woman in his congregation to show Dean how often he said ‘god’ or ‘Jesus’ disrespectfully. After a few weeks and about thirty dollars in quarters it stopped being a problem. Seeing it again, Dean laughs, pays up, and makes sure it’s on the ground and out of their way before pressing Castiel against the wall.

Later there’s a call from Gabriel.

“It’s been too long since I last saw you, Dean-o.”

“Dude, it’s been three days.”

“I wanted to check up on you. Let’s play a game of doctor and patient, full confidentiality between you, me and anyone who might happen to overhear.”

“Do you want to talk to Cas? I can go get him for you-”

“What are your symptoms? I’ll give you a list and you tell me how they’re affecting you. Nightmares. Being afraid to look at your reflection. Remembering things that didn’t happen. Clinging to Cassie like no self-respecting Winchester should, your dad would have words with you about that-”

He grips the phone tightly. 

“Don’t tell me you know what Dad would say.”

“Oh, that hit a nerve? What about the rest of it? What’s wrong with you, Dean-o, want to share?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your life. And my brother’s.”

“You can come see us if you want.”

There’s laughter through the phone. “I’ve seen too much of you already.”

“Seriously, do you wanna talk to Cas?”

“I want you to stop holding onto this fantasy that you’re happy. We live in a bigger world than what you want and time isn’t going to wait for you like we are.” A pause and then the easier, mocking tone he’s used to from Gabriel. “That’s my professional advice. You can pay your bill through my nurse, who will be in contact with you shortly.”

He listens to the dial tone until Castiel slips his arms around his waist. 

Framed photos are hung on the wall, family portraits that the Novaks sat together for that look twice as expensive and half as fun as the grainy images from Dean’s childhood. Castiel’s siblings with their families and photos of the few times they’ve all managed to get together—not on holidays or special occasions, but after health scares when everyone rushed to offer support. 

There’s a photo of Dean, Castiel and Sam sitting around a table back when they were just close friends, with Sam’s then-girlfriend behind the camera. Photos of holidays, with either of them angling the camera blindly to get everything in frame and doing about as well as you could expect. One that Sam took with his phone of them standing out on the street at night, grinning like idiots because they’d just gotten engaged, and Dean was so shaky with relief that he dropped the car keys and it took ten minutes to find them again.

They’re memories made special by love and are special only to him and the people who love him.

When Sam comes by with the toolbox he and Cas are sitting side by side on the couch, watching the latest episode of Dr Sexy M.D. He has a hand half-over his eyes and is visibly relieved when he sees them. “Oh, great. I was worried I’d be walking in on something.”

“Not during soap hour,” Dean tells him cheerfully, knowing without looking away from the screen that his brother is rolling his eyes.

“I don’t understand.” Castiel frowns at the television. “If Dr Sexy is romantically interested in the medical intern, and those feelings are obviously reciprocated, why is he avoiding her and flirting with the co-worker he was previously involved with?”

“He’s worried that she’ll lose her job if the director finds out.”

Castiel considers that for a moment. “But Dr Sexy has shown that he can be professional regardless of his personal stance, and Suzanne assisted with the measures taken to save the director’s life. It doesn’t make sense that they would continue to ignore their feelings.”

If it was any other show Dean would be kissing him right now. They end up watching the episode together and Sam is asking Castiel about the move when the phone rings.

“Hi, Dean.”

“Anna,” he says, relieved.

“Why do you think Castiel married you?” she asks out of nowhere.

“Huh?”

“Think about it.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why he married me. There are people out there who could’ve made him happier, or understood him better. But I’m selfish, Anna, and he’s Cas.”

“Would you ever leave him?”

“Yeah. If he asked me to.”

“If you had to choose between him and Sam-”

“Me,” he interrupts her to say. “I’d die before I let either of them get hurt.”

There’s a long silence and then, “Would you give them up?”

“What?”

“If you were hurting them. Would you give them up? Could you do that for them, Dean?”

He doesn’t say anything, until, “Yes.” The word is heavy in the air, in the imagined echo of it, through the house to the living room where his brother and husband are sitting.

“I’ll see you soon, Dean,” Anna says almost apologetically and ends the call.

There’s a framed photo of his mom, holding Sam when he was a baby at the house in Lawrence, Kansas. On an impulse he slides it out from the glass and turns it over – it goes black at the corner, as if burning, curling in until the date, _November 2, 1983,_ is unreadable.

His husband is a better man than he will ever be and Dean means it when he says, after Sam has gone and too-quietly, “I can’t give you anything, Cas, that you wouldn’t have better with someone else.”

“I chose to be with you, not because of what you could give me, but because you’re Dean.”

“I’m not him! I can’t give you this-” he gestures around them helplessly, “-a nice house, home-cooked meals and adopted kids someday. I’m not...right, for you, Cas!” It’s suddenly, deafeningly, painfully quiet. He tells him, “I would give you everything I had, and it’s _nothing._ ”

“You were more than I ever thought to ask for, Dean,” he replies. “More than enough.”

It’s not the worst thing he’s had to do, but it’s still not easy to say, “This isn’t—this...isn’t right.”

* * *

**GUARDIANSHIP**

A man dies of old age, having said goodbye to his family members, and Dean gets to congratulate himself on a job well done. His next assignment is Sam Winchester—a scruffy-haired kid who wants to be a lawyer, living in Kansas. His mom died when he was too young to remember it, and his dad has just had a fatal heart attack while paying for gas.

In the space of seconds he finds a vessel who could pass for the kid’s brother, in hospital, comatose and all but dead to his family. He’s willing to host an angel for a few years in exchange for a permanent recovery. So it’s Dean Winchester, wearing a leather jacket and Led Zeppelin t-shirt, who walks over to where Sam is waiting at the car.

“Hey, Sammy. Ready to go?”

The kid remembers a lot of things that haven’t happened—Dean making pancakes on his birthdays, making fun of reality TV shows together, going to the library and helping him study for tests, past girlfriends, favourite pizza toppings, prank wars, looking out for each other when they were sick or worried—and he smiles so brightly at him that he could light up a room. “Yeah, Dean.” 

He gets into the passenger seat of the car as Dean jangles the keys around and starts up the engine. When Dean glances at him as he adjusts the mirror, he’s frowning. “What?”

“That’s a stupid shirt.”

“Your taste in music is stupid,” he replies cheerfully. “But you know the rule, Sammy. Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cake-hole,” and he turns the classic rock station up loud as they drive away from Kansas.

They stay at a motel for the night and Sam falls asleep just as soon as he gets bored of watching TV and reading the shitty paperback novel he chose from the shelf downstairs. Dean doesn’t need to sleep, so he clears away the stuff they used for dinner and uses angel vision to check out Sam’s soul. It’s luminescent, bright and unwavering the way kids’ usually are. And stained, like fuel in water—pervasive waves of darker colours, indefinable by human languages. It’s a warning, a threat, a demon’s promise. As long as Dean’s around to be his guardian angel, it’s meaningless.

They settle down where Sam can go to a good school and no one will recognise Dean’s vessel. He works as a mechanic three days a week and a road service technician for another day. Not being human himself, he gets a kick out of driving around the state, enjoying the landscape and the people he meets, and complaining with his co-workers about traffic lights and the difficulties of customer service. It’s impossible to forget that he doesn’t belong here, but it gets harder and harder to remember that he’s not really Sam’s brother.

When Sam goes on a week-long school trip and Meg keeps the plane grounded so she can get close to him, he disarms her and cuts her throat with the knife, even as it burns his own skin. An exorcism would have been cleaner and kinder. He sees judgment in Thursday’s expressionless face when the other angel appears beside him. 

“New vessel, Thursday?” He wipes his fingers through the slickness of blood out of human habit, then vanishes it. 

The vessel is blue-eyed and must have been wearing a trench coat that Thursday doesn’t realise makes him look weird to humans when it’s this hot outside. “Yes,” says Thursday. “His name is Jimmy Novak. He was...pleased, to assist with my heavenly duties.”

“Yeah, sure. So, did you just come here to hang out?”

Thursday sort of squints at him. “No, brother. I am here to inform you that you are a guardian, not a soldier, and violence is not necessary for Sam Winchester’s protection.”

Dean scowls and kicks the body, as it bleeds out onto the patterned carpet. “She would’ve hurt him.”

“Meg Masters was possessed after a disagreement with her family. Had she been returned to her home, this could have been resolved before her death.” Thursday says calmly, “You have made a mistake,” and, “Anger is a human emotion, brother. We are their servants.”

When Azazel leaves all of the children that he had poisoned in an abandoned town to betray each other, and Dean follows him across continents to shoot him, finally, with a human gun, he thinks that maybe he’s just Sam’s servant.

The crossroads demon he had made a deal with to get the Colt drags him down to Hell, scarring his soul for all eternity with weapons of torture. Knives, wires, corruption, regret... It takes forty years to climb out again and be back at Sam’s side as if no time at all had passed. His brothers and sisters might have more to say about the devastation of his Grace if there wasn’t a civil war going on in Heaven.

As it is, Thursday appears in his kitchen at midnight.

“If you came here to say anything, just say it.”

“You chose to go to Hell for Sam Winchester. Your voice has been missing from the angelic chorus. We thought it had been silenced forever.” 

Dean looks at him with surprise. “You thought that I fell?”

“It was a possibility.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he says emphatically, stepping forward. “I’ve never seen our Father, Thursday, but what makes me different to you and the archangels and anyone with enough power and time to give a damn about what I’m doing, is that I don’t care if he’s there or not. I don’t need him to hear my prayers. I’m an angel and I do my job. You can’t doubt that.”

Thursday just stares back at him, despite his blasphemy. “You are tired, brother.”

“I’m not a coward.”

“You’re making mistakes,” Thursday says challengingly. “Sam Winchester needs you to take care of him. Instead you are endangering yourself and becoming weaker-”

“I’m not-”

“You aren’t human, brother. You will not be forgiven if you go astray-”

“I don’t need our Father’s forgiveness!” he shouts, nearly loud enough to wake Sam up.

Suddenly they’re in the darkness of space, lit by the distant deaths of stars and galaxies forsaken by an absent god. The moon is silent behind them and the Earth, below, shines with the brilliance of billions of souls. Dean can’t believe in the Father that would abandon this, but he has a faith in humans that inspires him to loyalty and self-sacrifice.

After his time in Hell, their true forms are like the sun and the moon. If he just looks at the humans and not at himself, he won’t see how weakly his Grace is shining.

“He’ll never see this,” he realises.

Thursday asks patiently, “Who?”

“Sam.”

“Humans,” Thursday observes. “Their only limit is mortality. Ours is the word of our Father.”

“This isn’t right,” he says and all at once his world narrows, though it looks the same.

Anna is standing there in human form, wearing an old leather jacket.

“I felt it,” he tells her with the echo of awe. “Why would Cas give up all of that for me?”

She smiles at him. “You would have given it up for Sam.”

“This isn’t a free therapy session,” Gabriel interrupts. “We’re not here to work through your lingering trust issues, or depressingly low self-esteem, so can you go ahead and bring me one reality closer to collecting my winnings and drinking juice somewhere in the Caribbean islands? Awesome, thanks.”

“Dick,” Dean mutters.

“Never heard of him,” Gabriel replies as the space and stars disappear again.

* * *

**COSMIC LAW**

The sigil is more complicated than he’s used to, covered with Enochian lettering. Still, it doesn't look all that different from the sigil that he uses to summon Castiel. They didn’t have to anoint it with anything; no angel’s blood or holy water. Apparently all they needed were the lines painted in solid black against a wall, marking out an archway large enough that he could comfortably pass through it, and Cas’ presence to activate the sigil.

Sam had offered a lengthy explanation about angels existing in four dimensions and being able to perceive three, while humans exist in only three dimensions...discounting the ‘other theoretical dimensions’ of time and…whatever. It had promised to be a long and boring talk that Dean didn’t figure that he would be able to fully understand.

Cas’ explanation was simpler: once activated, the sigil would serve as a doorway to Heaven. Angels are able to travel there by other means and the sigil is little more than a nearly-forgotten contingency plan to be used in an emergency.

“The archangels will not be immediately aware of your presence. You must take care not to be discovered. I will attempt to distract my brothers if it becomes necessary.” 

The stilted light of his Grace is no longer blinding, as it had been when they first met. It’s still awe-inspiring, shining bright and pure from that place in his chest where a human’s heart would be.

Even when the light has faded away, Dean finds himself trying to see it through the façade of humanity; past the material of Jimmy Novak’s trench coat, hidden somewhere underneath skin and muscle, which contains the impossible vastness that is _Cas_ in all his angelic glory.

He catches himself staring and clears his throat, shifting awkwardly. “Ready to go?”

“Ladies first.”

“Classy,” he says to his brother before stepping forward and through the sigil.

His organs are stretched or rearranged completely, sliding back into their usual places once he has passed fully into Heaven. For a moment, Dean wonders if this is what dying feels like if your soul isn’t eternally damned. 

Heaven doesn’t look anything like what he had expected. He’s standing alone in a hallway lined with doors. The sigil isn’t there when he turns around. Instead, the hallway extends back that way, doors arranged in perfect symmetry.

The silence is more absolute than any quiet that he’s ever experienced before. Weirdly, he can hear the saliva moving around his mouth when he swallows, can hear the friction of his shoes against the floor and his clothes shifting when he turns around.

His heartbeat speeds up audibly when he comes face to face with an archangel. He can hear his breath shuddering inwards in surprise. Hunter’s instinct has him reaching for the knife strapped at his waist-

The metal feels hot enough to have burned his hand down to the bones. Dean hisses out a pained breath, trying to will his fingers to close around the knife-

What he endured in Hell has made him resilient enough to hold the knife for a couple of seconds, then-

It clatters loudly to the ground.

Gabriel’s smile is dangerous. “Surprise,” he says.

* * *

“There are conditions to you being here, and there are conditions to you getting out.” Gabriel speaks as if he’s reciting from memory, idly tossing a coin up into the air and then catching it. “Think of it as a game. Once you win, you’ll be rewarded with your freedom. Here’s your motivation, aside from the obvious: the clock will keep ticking all the while you’re in here. When you get out, you’ll be the same Dean who came in. Just a little more penitent, if I’ve done my job right. But time will have passed. Maybe a month. Maybe a millennium. It’s the difference between seeing Sammy again or reuniting with a gravestone.”

He struggles against the nothing that’s holding him, then forces himself to relax.

“Keep many prisoners in Heaven?” he asks conversationally.

“They’re not human, usually. You’re a special case, Dean-o.” 

With a wink, Gabriel disappears into the black darkness that surrounds them.

Maybe it’s his imagination that the lights are swaying closer to him. “Weird,” he murmurs, reaching out tentatively before drawing his hand away. Dean looks around to see nothing but pitch dark and floating lights in every direction, like Gabriel drew inspiration from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.

Suddenly, there’s a sound that’s something between a whip cracking and thunder. The black space shifts and there are walls, ceiling and floor, shining like mirrors that reflect the lights endlessly. A corner of the room breaks inwards and in the next second Gabriel and—“Anna?” he says, disbelievingly—are standing there, pushing back whoever’s fighting to get in. They’re speaking over each other and Dean can’t make out the words, until, “DEAN!”

He shouts back, “Sam!” and runs towards the breach, ready to fight his way out.

“We’re going to get you out of here!”

It feels like everything slows down but his mind. He's running in slow motion, watching as Cas lands a lucky shot against Gabriel, whose eyes widen in shock before he doubles over, hand pressed against the point of impact. Both sides are trying to incapacitate, not kill.

Then Cas breaks away from the conflict to head towards him, hand outstretched, ready to grip his shoulder and save him yet again-

An involuntary sound escapes from Dean’s throat as he watches them both twist into ash, their silhouettes barely visible against a backdrop of endless, endless black-

Time resumes its normal speed. He closes the distance, falling to his knees where his brother and friend had stood and searching out any fragment of ash with his fingers, gasping violently. “No, no, no, _no, no,_ ” he says over and over, mind struggling to accept what he has just seen.

His hands are shaking. He can barely see them. “This… This is…” He tries to regulate his breathing the way Dad taught him years ago. Panicking is fatal for a hunter. He _knows_ that.

“This is happening,” Dean tells himself. “Weird angel mojo. You’ve gotta deal with it.”

When his hands have stilled enough that he can loosen the knuckle-white grip on his jacket, and his breathing is regular enough to sustain another burst of speed, Dean stands up.

It must be another trick: the edge of a doorway in the interminable darkness, light appearing to shine through from the other side as the crack widens, slowly.

Still, it feels solid underneath his hands as he grasps the door, forcing it open.

Dean stumbles out of the prison cell and into an empty hallway. Heart thudding, he realises that it’s identical to the one where Gabriel had captured him. And there—his knife is still lying on the floor.

He pretty much dives for it, wresting the knife up and taking a breath, before cutting the pad of his index finger just deep enough for a trickle of blood. “Cas,” he murmurs, tracing out the familiar pattern of a summoning sigil. “Cas, Cas, I’m here. I’m-” He glances over the design, making sure that the lines drawn in blood haven’t lost their specific shapes, lettering in Enochian spelling out words that he could never pronounce, that don’t mean anything more to him than the promise that Cas will be here soon.

Satisfied, Dean presses his palm hard against the sigil. “-here,” he says triumphantly.

A flash of angel’s Grace and warm hands, bracing his shoulders. Dean is grinning even before he catches sight of Cas’ face, leaning back and knowing that his weight will be supported.

He stiffens at the sound of Gabriel’s voice.

“Clever,” the archangel remarks.

* * *

_“Rule number one of hunting. Never on an empty stomach.” Sam grins at him and pats his shoulder before moving away from the bed._

_“Defection aside, I know my little brother. Not only can he not save you from this, but when he finds out what it is, he_ won’t.”

_“Each one of these is another round. Another life, complete with memories. The aim of the game is to work out which one is real. Good luck. And for Sam’s sake, you’d better work quickly.”_

_“My favourite little brother and I have to watch you debauching his fictional human self. When you, fictionally speaking, have a girlfriend and no history of attraction of men. You know what that says to me? It says to me that you’re hiding something. Real, non-fictional you. It also says to me that a lot of people are losing bets today, and that’s what I like to hear!” Gabriel grins widely and tosses a couple of ancient-looking coins into the air._

_John has a white-knuckled grip on the slab which he breaks only to push down Dean’s hand, which fights the restraints to try to reach out to him as he asks, over and over, to die. “You wouldn’t want this,” he hisses. “It’s just the pain talking.”_

_“There’s just something about this,” Dean murmurs, twirling the paper flower between his fingers. “Like it doesn’t feel real.”_

_Dean sits there, cross-legged on the floor in a motel room, watching his little brother who he loves more than anything and wishing that their dad would come home with lots of money and their mom was still alive and bad things never happened to any of them._

There shall no one come to harm thee  
Naught shall ever break thy rest

_“What I’m saying is that you don’t need love to live, but it’s nice to have the company,” Anna tells him gently. “You don’t have to sacrifice something before anyone’s even asked you to. I hope you understand that.”_

_The thing about Tessa is that they’re always laughing when they’re together. He loves spending time with her, loves her, loves that they’ve been dating long enough to feel this comfortable. She never asks him about the stuff that he can’t talk about, just waits for him to come to her about it. Trusts him enough to believe that he will._

_“Oh God, up there in Heaven, the boss of...I guess everything, send someone to check on the elevator soon, ‘cause I’m starting to get hungry. Thanks. Uh...please.”_

_Dean stares at the letters of his best friend’s name._ Castiel James Novak. As long as life and memory last, we will remember thee.

_“Prayer is a different experience for everyone. It’s common to bow your head and clasp your hands, like this.” Castiel demonstrates. “But I have always thought that is impersonal. When I am speaking to God, I look up at His most beautiful creation. The sky, with the sun, or the stars. It reminds me of how grateful I am for being given this life.”_

_“I was standing outside and fired a warning shot so the werewolf trying to take down Sam knew that he had backup. I thought it would take a couple of minutes for the cops to arrive, but they were in the area already. There wasn’t any choice except to let them arrest me. Sam got away, that’s what’s important.”_

_“You were more than I ever thought to ask for, Dean," he tells him truthfully. “More than enough.”_

_They’re in the darkness of space, lit by the distant deaths of stars and galaxies forsaken by an absent god. The moon is silent behind them and the Earth, below, shines with the brilliance of billions of souls. Dean can’t believe in the Father that would abandon this._

* * *

“Welcome to the Green Room,” Gabriel says, releasing his shoulder.

He’s still trying to make sense of the sudden flood of memories, blinking images away from the inside of his eyelids. Blood drips from his hand, clenched tightly around the knife. At first it's easier to let out a ragged breath and clean the blade against his shirt, before sliding it into its usual place at his waistband, than acknowledge the people standing in front of him.

“Mom,” he whispers.

Her face breaks into a wide smile and she rushes forward, into his arms. At the last second, he remembers that his hand is bloodied and uses his other hand instead to reach up and gently cradle the back of her head. His cheek presses against the soft blonde hair. His mother always wore the same perfume, he remembers. She always smelled like jasmine.

“My brave boy,” she murmurs. 

Mom eases back, smoothing a strand of hair back from his forehead. Then she steps away.

“Whoa, Sammy,” he says, nearly knocked over by the force of his younger brother’s hug. It doesn’t matter whether his hands are bloodied or not when he pats him on the back. They've been through worse than this before, and probably will be through worse again during their careers as hunters.

“Cas had to reactivate the sigil after you went through,” Sam explains breathlessly. “By the time that we got here you were already-”

Dean clears his throat. “Yeah. Uh, how much of that did you…”

“There were a couple of times I had to, uh…tune out for a little while,” he admits. “But pretty much all of it. Did you really get married to-”

“We are _not_ talking about that,” he insists, covering his brother’s mouth to prevent him from saying any more.

“Are you sure?” Sam asks after tugging the hand away. “I think you should talk to someone about how often you and Cas just happened to-”

“I don’t want to hear the rest of that sentence!”

Sam laughs, putting an arm around his shoulders playfully. “C’mon. There are people who want to see you again.”

And there are—familiar faces of people he’d known who had passed away, smiling at him from across the room like it doesn’t matter how he got here, just that he’s _here_ to shake their hands and listen to their opinions about his non-existent relationship with a fallen angel—and they know him well enough to be silent and make space for the person he cares about enough for emotional transference across _whole damn realities._

In the fraction of a second that his eyes are closed while blinking, the room around them changes. They’re alone together. Cas stands at arm’s length, because for some reason neither of them has ever made to step _closer,_ close enough to do more than just look at each other with unrealised anticipation of _something_ that he was never able to find the words for.

“I’m selfish,” he confesses.

“Not selfish enough to put your happiness before mine or Sam’s.”

Dean takes a step towards him and then hesitates. “I killed you.”

“In an alternate reality where my death was necessary to close an entrance to Hell.”

So he takes another step. “I kissed you, too.”

That statement seems to amuse Cas more than anything else. “Many times.”

Another step, and they’re _finally_ close enough. “Can I kiss you now?”

Cas responds with the soothing press of his hand along Dean’s jaw.

He shudders out a sigh, reaching up to grasp his elbows while Cas traces long-faded scars with a fascination that Dean doesn’t understand. After a time, his hand comes to rest at the back of Dean's neck, where fingers slide through his hair. A barely-there pressure, encouraging him to angle his head and lean in.

Their breaths mingle, tantalisingly warm against his skin. He embarrasses himself by gasping in the second just before Cas’ lips brush against his own, but this…this is _Cas,_ who has always been an exception to every rule that Dean ever made for himself, who is an impossibility, who is standing here with him now and kissing him like they were made for it.

It goes without saying, but he says it anyway: “I love you.”

Opening his eyes again, Dean half-expects to see dark skies and starlight.

Instead, there is a sight infinitely more beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> below is a list of the alternate universes and content warnings for each.  
> you can skip any of them without missing crucial plot, except for the first and last.
> 
> the content warnings are intended to best prepare readers for potentially distressing content. so, even if something was only mentioned in passing, it will be included here.
> 
> as a general rule: if you dont want to read angst, skip the 'nightmares' sections--especially 'nightmare ii'
> 
> BREAKFAST  
> au where john never bought the impala (gasp!)  
> content warnings: none
> 
> BREAKFAST II  
> au where dean cheats on his girlfriend  
> content warnings: relationship infidelity, implied voyeurism
> 
> NIGHTMARES  
> au where something is very wrong with dean  
> content warnings: violence, murder, grief, demonic possession
> 
> COLOUR CONTRAST  
> au where sam matchmakes dean with a cute art curator  
> content warnings: none
> 
> THE EVERYDAY ROUTINE  
> childhood au  
> content warnings: child neglect, bad parenting
> 
> CAN YOU HEAR IT?  
> au where dean is blind and meets an angel  
> content warnings: victim blaming, demons, references to past trauma, deception, character death, ableism, grief
> 
> THE NEXT BEST THING  
> au where they have been best friends since college  
> content warnings: none
> 
> KEEP CALM AND PLAY ANGRY BIRDS  
> au where businessman dean is caught in an elevator  
> content warnings: minor injury
> 
> NIGHTMARES II  
> au where dean is grieving and everything hurts  
> content warnings: off-screen character death, suicide, grief, depression, dissociation, disordered thinking
> 
> HOMEWORK  
> high school au  
> content warnings: coming out, discussion of faith, mention of queer antagonism
> 
> ANIMALISTIC  
> au where dean hunts a werewolf  
> content warnings: telepathic coercion, violence, murder
> 
> FAMILY  
> domestic married au! and personal favourite!!  
> (if you want to skip over the angst, avoid the sections in italics. they are descriptions of canonical events which dean has nightmares about)  
> content warnings: low self-esteem  
> content warnings for the nightmares: violence, demons, car accident, torture, psychological abuse 
> 
> GUARDIANSHIP  
> au where dean is sams guardian angel  
> content warnings: death mention, violence
> 
> COSMIC LAW  
> the gang breaks into heaven, typical thursday  
> content warnings: minor supernatural violence, panic, self-inflicted injury, blood


End file.
